Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln

Who should you get to play arguably the greatest ever president? Well the man who is arguably the greatest ever actor. Day-Lewis has three Best Actor Oscars, one for this very role, and it’s hard to argue with his immense talent. Lincoln is essentially a parliamentary procedural where Lincoln is desperately trying to corral enough votes to pass the Thirteenth Amendment (which makes slavery illegal) before the end of the civil war. Lincoln stands as a bulwark of decency constantly demanding that they must have this amendment even delaying peace to secure it. Day-Lewis captures Lincoln as the expert orator, the decent man and even doing things which some would consider wrong and shady political shenanigans.

Paul Giamatti as John Adams in John Adams

To non-Americans John Adams is a lesser-known president, coming straight after George Washington, but lesser-known or not Giamatti is fantastic as Adams. The HBO series follows John Adams just as a spirit of rebellion is taking hold, through his path to war and then helping make America. Giamatti’s Adams is a difficult character who does not come lightly to rebellion and has high respect for the rule of law. One of the best sections of the show is early on when as a lawyer Adams defends British soldiers who fired on and killed rioters in Boston. The amount of pressure exerted on Adams to not do this is immense but because he believes what he is doing is right he perseveres. Another great moment for Giamatti as Adams is when after achieving independence he is appointed ambassador to Britain and meets King George III, surely one of the most awkward meetings in history. The tumult of different emotions in Adams must have been incredible but Giamatti portrays it very well.

Unsurprisingly we see a number of presidents in this series – David Morse as George Washington, Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as John Quincy Adams as well as a number of other people pivotal in the founding of America.

Bill Murray as Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park On Hudson

Franklin D. Roosevelt, or FDR, is widely regarding as one of the great presidents of the 20th Century (not to be confused with Theodore Roosevelt, a previous president and relative of FDR, who was once shot in the chest and then proceeded to give a 90 minute speech before seeing a doctor, Robin Williams portrayed a version of Theodore Roosevelt in Night At The Museum and captured the indomitable nature of the man). He is the president who lead America out of the Great Depression and through most of The Second World War. Murray does well in capturing the peculiar character of FDR, a heavy drinking womaniser from a family with old wealth and high prestige who went to titanic lengths to provide for the tens of millions of Americans in need; a biography of FDR is titled A Traitor To His Class as many saw him as betraying the rich to help the poor. Murray’s portrayal of FDR was something of an eccentric character, with a silliness to him, all the while dealing with incredibly serious problems. Murray’s FDR always has a clever quip for every situation but also a melancholy understanding of the struggles of life.

Martin Sheen as Jed Barlett in The West Wing

Much has already been said about this presidential portrayal so this article will limit itself to saying Martin Sheen is spectacular as Jed Bartlett.

Peter Sellers as Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove

Comic genius and tremendous actor Peter Sellers played three roles in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Dr. Strangelove – one of which was fictional president Merkin Muffley. In Dr. Strangelove the world is brought to the brink of nuclear annihilation by an unhinged American general and Muffley is trying to avert this apocalypse. Whilst Dr. Strangelove is primarily a comedy it contains many great dramatic performances and it is only the slightest twist than turns the film from a drama to a comedy. Muffley is trying to do the right thing – stopping the end of the world – whilst many of those around him are advocating they should launch an all out attack on Russia. Muffley is both close to all-powerful and impotent with the smallest of reasons derailing his attempts to stop the madness, such as a drunk Russian premier.

There are a number of memorable lines delivered by Sellers – “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the war Room!” as the Soviet ambassador and an American general have a fist fight, and the second being the chilling “Wouldn’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they’d, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?” This is paraphrasing real-life Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev who faced his own potential nuclear apocalypse said “the living will envy the dead”. The skill of Sellers to be able to move between dark humour and the existential dread of looming nuclear war is breathtaking.

Also Read: How The “War On Terror” Changed Hollywood

The post The Presidents of the United States of America and the Actors That Have Played Them appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

Christian Bale has a history of dramatic physical transformations for roles and his latest performance as former American Vice-President Dick Cheney in Vice is one of his best as he is almost unrecognisable. Gone is the chiselled physique of a man who once portrayed Batman replaced by a great deal of weight and a lot less hair. A lot of films have been made about real presidents but they have to contend with things like facts, what about fictional leaders who can be as brave, unhinged or greedy as you like?

Politician Type One – The Action Hero

Since the 90s it is seemingly not enough for a president to be an intelligent and honest public servant – they have to kick ass too. Past presidents may have sufficed in giving the motivational speech but Thomas J. Whitmore (Bull Pullman in Independence Day) got very much involved in fighting aliens. Oddly enough at the beginning of the film it seems his presidency is not going well so maybe this alien invasion worked out well for him. I haven’t seen the sequel so have no knowledge of his future political career.

It’s a mystery why President James Marshall (Harrison Ford in Air Force One) even needs Secret Service protection as he’s clearly perfectly capable of looking after himself. Marshall pursued an aggressive interventionist foreign policy which mirrored his aggressive killing-terrorists-trying-to-kill-him-and-his-family policy.

So popular is this trope of the action hero president two films came out at roughly the same time with the same plot – narrative twins White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen saw Jamie Foxx and Aaron Eckhart trying to save their presidential lives while the White House is attacked. Admittedly each film has a separate action hero star that takes charge of most of the fighting but each president has their moments.

Politician Type Two – The Incompetent

Being a world leader is hard. Really, really hard. And that’s at the best of times but films don’t get made about the best of times, they are made about things like alien invasions, nuclear Armageddon or a collapsing civilisation brought about by rampant stupidity. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson, Mars Attacks!) is a man not up to the job of handling first contact with Martians, constantly asking for advice from similarly incompetent advisors (and wife) and virtually giving up when things get tough, with his primary concern being about approval ratings rather than, you know, stopping the alien invasion. He even manages to mess up his last-minute saving the world speech.

Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove) was given a tough time by a rogue general who under his own authority launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union but he perfectly satirised the insanity of Cold War brinkmanship. No matter how close the end of the world was the East vs West paradigm continued with advisors shouting about the best way to “win” the battle for control over their radiation poisoned world.

Perhaps my favourite fictional president is the wonderfully named Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews, Idiocracy). He is a flamboyant and extravagant man which is to be expected of a former professional wrestler and porn star. He runs a future America where stupidity is destroying pretty much everything and Luke Wilson’s “average” intelligence character is the smartest man in the world. At least Camacho had the sense to spot good talent.

Politician Type Three – The Tyrant

The incompetent leaders are usually found in comedies and many of them ones are at least trying to do a good job and help people. But there are also tyrants – the people who have seized power and will not give it up. President Snow (Donald Sutherland,,The Hunger Games) is an expert manipulator of the population using both fear and hope to control people. Dapper, polite and rather presidential-looking at first glance he may have appeared a perfectly good leader but very quickly his brutality and cruelty are laid bare.

British politicians are certainly rarer in films than their American counterparts but they have a tyrant of their own – Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt, V For Vendetta); an angry shouting tyrant constantly having himself projected onto huge screens and raging about all the people he doesn’t like which even includes Stephen Fry. The final reveal of what Sutler is really like when things get difficult is very satisfying.

What does this mean for “real” leaders?

So we have three different tropes of politicians in films (and there are many more) but what does this tell us about how we see politicians? The Tyrants obviously exist to show us what could go wrong, indeed V For Vendetta has several sequences taking us step-by-step through the process.

The Incompetents are an important satirical part of culture and it is crucial to be able to laugh at politicians and people in power and be aware that they too panic, get overwhelmed and do stupid things. Looking at three leaders I’ve mentioned each speaks to their time – in 1990s people thought everything became style over substance, in the 1960s it did seem like the world could be destroyed at any moment by arrogant politicians and in the early 2000s people were worried about the “dumbing down” of society.

The Action Heroes are certainly an odd cultural item as most real life politicians are not going to be very good in a fight (with the possible exception of Theodore Roosevelt who once delivered an 84 minute speech after getting shot in the chest). They tend to be older people who have spent more time in boring budget meetings than in highly choreographed gun battles. I think it is that politics is rarely obviously heroic – there is a lot of compromise, a need to understand very complicated issues where there is no easy answer, a requirement to listen to committees and opponents and judges instead of doing what you want. On the other hand if terrorists take over Air Force One and are trying to kill you then it’s very easy to get behind your hero president throwing people off his plane.

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