Warm Springs

Warm Springs 2005

• Director: Joseph Sargent
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Cynthia Nixon, David Paymer, Tim Blake Nelson, Nelsan Ellis, Jane Alexander, Kathy Bates
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Kenneth Branagh – Dunkirk, Wallander, My Week with Marilyn, The Boat that Rocked, Valkyria, Sleuth 2007, Shackleton, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rabbit-Proof Fence, How to Kill Your Neighbour’s Dog, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Wild Wild West, Hamlet, Othello, Frankenstein, Much Ado About Nothing, Swing Kids, Peter’s Friends, Dead Again, Henry V, Fortunes of War
• Cynthia Nixon – Igby Goes Down, Marvin’s Room, Pelican Brief, Amadeus
• David Paymer – Amistad, Get Shorty, Quiz Show, Hill Street Blues
• Tim Blake Nelson – Detachment, American Violet, The Darwin Awards, Holes, The Good Girl, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Hamlet, The Thin Red Line, Donnie Brasco
• Nelsan Ellis – The Butler, The Help, The Soloist, Veronica Mars
• Jane Alexander – Terminator Salvation, The Cider House Rules, Playing for Time, Kramer vs Kramer
• Kathy Bates –The Day the Earth Stood Still, Six Feet Under, About Schmidt, The Third Rock from the Sun, Titanic, Dolores Claiborne, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, Misery, White Palace, Dick Tracy
• Why?  Kenneth Branagh
• Seen:  13 July 2019

 Eleanor (Nixon) and Franklin (Branagh) do not have a happy marriage. He’s in love with another woman, she’s reserved and uncomfortable in public, but if he wants to have a political career there can be no divorce.

Then he is stricken with polio and is paralysed from the waist down.

Eleanor and Franklin’s political advisor Louis Howe (Paymer) want him to pursue his political career. Franklin is bitter and depressed and insists on going to Warm Springs, supposedly a spa for miracle cures.

It proves to be a rustic, isolated, decrepit place, a wreck. He stays. She leaves. He struggles to learn to walk again. She struggles to have the courage to speak publicly, to keep Franklin’s political hopes alive.

Details of living with a severe physical handicap are interwoven with details on how one of the most politically power couples in American history is created.

The relationship between Eleanor and Franklin is too romanticised and the racial conflicts of the time are only hinted at but otherwise it’s a very strong film. I can’t imagine better actors in the lead roles than Branagh and Nixon.

4 ½ * of 5