Having come through (or survived, depending on your point of view) a tumultuous US presidential election year, it is perhaps appropriate to remind ourselves that real political change takes blood, sweat and tears. At a time when the United States feels more divided than ever, it’s healthy to look back at one of the pivotal turning points of modern history when principle beat out artifice, and politics with all its occasionally grubby skulduggery was harnessed to the service of truly noble ends: a fight for a key component of civil rights that pushed the political system to the point that it irrevocably reshaped contemporary electoral politics.
Think about this amazing fact: before the 1964 Presidential election, the state of Georgia had never voted Republican. They have now done so for five consecutive elections and look set to maintain this dominating position for some time to come. The “Republican South” wasn’t always so much of a given, and HBO’s telefilm “All the Way” makes the case that this political shift started because Lyndon B. Johnson recognized the importance of civil rights when he ascended to the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, turning it into the centrepiece of his election campaign and the issue of that year, provoking the ire of a GOP establishment (and right-wing Democratic Party “Dixiecrats”) that weren’t on the right side of history.
This compelling drama, carried by a truly monumental performance from Bryan Cranston, captures the difficult intricacy of the political machinations. "All the Way" can be a little frustratingly thin, in that it tries to do a bit too much in its 132 running time, turning complex political figures into “plot device characters” (ones who come into frame, serve their purpose for the protagonist, and then exit stage right), but there’s so much worthy of discussion in the piece that “All the Way” never drags. If anything, it leaves the viewer aching for more detail – this could have been a six hour miniseries on the scale and complexity of HBO’s own stunning ‘John Adams.’
Adapted from his play of the same name, writer Robert Schenkkan, working with director Jay Roach, is careful not to make “All the Way” feel like a filmed play. A cinematic score by James Newton Howard, and fluid, complex camera work by Jim Denault help that effort, but it’s the relentlessly charismatic turn by Cranston (one of the most convincingly adept character actors of our times), that really magnifies the source material. One can see why he was so praised on stage as he embodies the thundering, Shakespearean paradox that was Johnson, diving into both his outlandish behavior (having meetings while sitting on the toilet) and complex moral code (his was an honour among pols in which morally ambivalent acts in the service of noble ends was always justified). This is a man who contained multitudes.
In that first minute, Johnson is on Air Force One, with a still-bloody Jackie Kennedy, after her husband’s assassination. He’s going to take the Oath of Office to become the President of the United States. In his first speech as President, Johnson affirms that the Civil Rights bill his predecessor started will be his priority. Johnson’s former mentor and friend Senator Richard Russell Jr. (a perfectly understated Frank Langella) isn’t too happy with this decision, but Hubert Humphrey (Bradley Whitford) embraces the directive, positioning himself to be Johnson’s Vice President in the upcoming election by making himself useful. Most of all, Martin Luther King Jr. (Anthony Mackie) recognizes that he will have to work carefully with Johnson to get what his movement demands from the government.
Prior to becoming Kennedy’s vice president, LBJ was Senate Majority Leader, a position at which he was unparalleled for his sheer mastery of the game of crafting, wheeling/dealing and passing legislation. It’s this instinctive gift that compels him to quickly make concessions to keep queasy Democrats in line and placate hostile Republicans, realizing that the bill can pass if broken down into incremental portions versus being pushed through en masse. Realizing that unless he removes voting rights from the bill, it won’t have the Senate votes to pass. Settling for half a loaf, rationalizing that he risked the entire legislation, Johnson elects to enact fair employment clauses first while making workplace discriminatory practices illegal. By doing so, the more contentious issue of voting rights for African-Americans is pushed back by a year, so as to allow him to build the general public’s appetite for change and for him to lobby wavering Senators for support.
Of course what appears to LBJ as a Solomonic choice inflames King’s movement, provoking searing debate and acts of rebellion in the ranks, and threatening to create an impression of lawlessness white reactionary organizations could exploit. How LBJ deals with all of this forms the core of ‘All the Way’s’ narrative and we are provided considerable insight into his extraordinary bobbing and weaving as he seeks to keep this unruly coalition of interests alive. Johnson pleads, cajoles, promises, even outright lies to everyone to get what he wants. And in three chilling scenes he deploys the infamous “treatment” wherein he essentially uses his height, burly build and baritone voice to physically intimidate opponents and weak-kneed supporters into line by the sheer force of his personality. Yes, at time, the President is a thug, but at least he is OUR thug.
In these moments, Cranston’s acting is so incandescent that he blows everyone else off the screen. He imbues Johnson with such fierce animal magnetism and barely-veiled, coiled menace that one can appreciate just why both JFK and RFK were so reluctant to put such a potentially uncontrollable force of nature on the ticket in 1960.
Cranston has nailed LBJ's accent, the bloated ego and all the elements on to which other actor’s would hang the entire performance, but then he adds nuances from there. Right from the beginning, when Johnson is questioning how seriously he’ll be taken as he steps into Kennedy’s shoes, this is an intricate acting turn that’s more interested in character details than caricature. Add to this the amazing quality of the makeup employed, the audience feels like voyeurs peeking into a world hitherto available only in history books and grainy newsreels.
While there’s a lot to like in Schenkkan's smart script, “All the Way” can feel like a crowded film, and roles like J. Edgar Hoover & Lady Bird Johnson aren’t designed to feel like more than sounding boards for Johnson. As Hoover (a one-dimensional Stephen Root) spies on King to try to get dirt and Lady Bird (Melissa Leo) stands stoically loyal by her husband’s side, the political pot starts to boil. Whitford captures Hubert Humphery's essential decency but comes across as well-meaningly ineffective; Mackie is solid as King but needed more screen time to fully develop his character. 'All the Way' focuses on Johnson’s role in the civil rights movement, not the story of civil rights on the ground in the South, as so deftly captured in Ava DuVernay's “Selma;”
As the 1964 election season heats up, party lines are drawn and unexpected curveballs keep Johnson from an easy path to retain the White House, which belies the conventional wisdom that he cruised to victory. Few films have better captured the unpredictability of the campaign season, such as when the murder of a civil rights activists derails his strategy or when the arrest of someone close to him threatens to ruin everything. And it’s impossible not to read a bit of commentary into the current political season when Johnson mentions “outside forces conquering and destroying the South by appealing to their racial hatred." It's a line that was either prescient to the racial divisions defining the 2016 campaign or written for the movie and not the play.
Lyndon Baines Johnson is one of American history’s most tragic figures. Born dirt-poor he dragged himself up through the political ranks to be offered by fate the most powerful position on earth. Besides the landmark Civil Rights Bill LBJ launched the greatest legislative torrent of legislation since Clement Atlee’s creation of the modern welfare state in 1945: the War on Poverty, creation of Medicare and MedicAid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, welfare reform, the National Endowment of the Arts, numerous transportation, environmental and consumer protection laws. Encapsulated in his catchphrase, “the Great Society,” Johnson’s singular tragedy is that history remembers him most for the escalation and failure of the Vietnam War, a chapter which overshadows all the good that this complex, heroic man sought to do, and denied him his fondest wish : to be regarded as a great president.
The ultimate irony is that, while his 1964 campaign slogan was "All the Way with LBJ," the man fell far short of his goal.
Director: Jay Roach
Producers: Steven Spielberg et al
Release Date: May, 2016
Production Company: HBO Films, Amblin Entertainment
Runtime: 132 minutes