Short Movie Review: Barry

I don’t know much about now former president Barack Obama, and after watching an hour forty five minute Netflix film on his college years I can still say the same thing. BUT, and this is a big ghetto booty but, I’ve got a firm grasp on that booty representing who he was and is now. That’s the key to any “live-action” biopic I think. I’m never going to know who Obama really is. I could read numerous books on him. Watch documentaries, hell even if I found some way to upstage Joe Biden and become his main hoe I still wouldn’t truly know him. That’s the problem with biopics and people in general. How many do we truly know? Now I could be very wrong. According to Marc Maron’s interview with Obama he appears to be a straight forward and stand up individual, but again, I just don’t know for sure.

This Netflix flick however, gives us a glimpse, a microscopic taste of the first black president. What does it taste like? It’s quite the mixture of flavor. A mixture of frustration brought about by discrimination. The film delivers Obama’s mental struggles through being a mixed race in early 1980’s New York. It depicts him as an outcast trying to find a space where he belongs. Despite this film taking place over 30 years ago the discrimination and racism unfortunately still reign true. That’s the film’s greatest strength: depicting the racism of our entire country through the personal hardships of one man. It shows the flaws of both races arguments too which engulfs the viewer in an uncomfortable yet necessary feeling of melancholy. As a country we can’t begin to unravel all the knots we’ve created through racism, but through this film’s depiction of a man deciding to accept himself and a world he can’t change overnight, we’re at least able to if we choose to do so move forward as he did.