Let’s face it: the documentary series devoted to American presidents relayed by the American channel History are often a little too complimentary. The string of often rave reviews by historians and other “experts” on these illustrious men of power and the neat dramatic reconstructions reinforce this impression that we are looking at a hagiography.
The very last production of the genre stands out a little from this lot, even if it nevertheless wears the same glorious clothes… This documentary miniseries in two long episodes on Theodore Roosevelt, the first Roosevelt to occupy the White House, produced among others by Leonardo DiCaprio (who should also play him soon in a Martin Scorsese film), draws up an illuminating chronology of this exceptional statesman, who has worn many hats (New York police chief, rancher in the West, colonel in the Spanish-American War, governor), before becoming president, when many did not want him in this position. The exercise sometimes falls into dithyramb: several interviewed historians do not hesitate to praise it, among other things for its avant-garde initiatives and its oratorical qualities. Fortunately, they also take the liberty of emphasizing the limits of his openness (among other things towards the First Peoples) and his boundless ambition… In the same vein, the scenes of dramatic reconstructions of significant episodes in the life of Roosevelt, carried by the convincing game of Rufus Jones and a sumptuous artistic direction, reveal a character certainly heroic, but also made of contradictions and defects. A president with a human dimension, to change a little.
To see in video