By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 30, 2005

Remember Kenneth Branagh, British actor, director and writer -- and, for all we know, doctor, lawyer and Indian chief? It was said the man could do anything. Well, he can't play FDR -- or so it seems for about the first half-hour of "Warm Springs," an HBO movie premiering tonight at 8.

And yet, funny thing: Even if Branagh never "becomes" FDR in the fullest and most satisfying sense, his performance takes hold of your imagination and makes the misgivings almost irrelevant. He gives us an affectingly grand and robust portrait of American heroism and of a man who almost missed his date with destiny because his body failed him.

When it failed, it threatened to take FDR's spirit with it. He was a rising young star on the political scene in the early 1920s when fate dealt him a crippling blow: polio, which robbed him of his physical strength and his ability to walk. Like any mortal, heroic or not, he considered throwing in the towel and abandoning what had promised to be a very public life.

His country needed him, needed him so much that he would eventually be elected president four times. He might have stayed in the White House even longer, but "this too, too solid flesh" turned out to be not solid enough. Even so, FDR looks in retrospect like the 20th century's Lincoln, a man who saved the country from collapse during the Great Depression and helped save the world from going to hell in World War II.

As the film opens, it's "On Golden Lake." Branagh, as an older FDR, pops out of the water -- suddenly, as if to make us jump in our seats the way the shark from "Jaws" did. Lifting himself onto the pier, he sticks a cigarette in that trademark holder of his and sits back to reminisce for the next two hours.

What no one needs is another "Sunrise at Campobello," the sentimental play about FDR, his wife and times that covered some of the same material but with suffocating nobility. The Broadway production was such a hit that it was filmed virtually intact, like a stage play -- static and stuffy. But in keeping with the times, "Warm Springs," by Margaret Nagle, is much edgier, and FDR is portrayed not as a one-dimensional living statue but as a restless, ambitious and sometimes bitterly frustrated man with one of the greatest support groups of all time to supplement his awesome inner strength.

Jane Alexander -- who has played Eleanor at least once in her long career -- is on the scene, but, ironically, this time as FDR's snobbish and haughty mother, while Cynthia Nixon of "Sex and the City" portrays a shy, gawky younger Eleanor, who is just learning to be assertive -- but she's a quick learner.

Branagh, under the direction of Joseph Sargent, shows us how naturally FDR took to politics and how the word "politician" can have some joy about it. It is, after all, the art of loving people. Posing with Boy Scouts at their summer camp before he's stricken, Roosevelt is every inch the politico, a man who wants to play a major role in his times and be a hero to people born silver-spoonless. But romping with children like a kid himself, FDR suddenly falls to the ground, pained and pale. The doctor's diagnosis is one word, then horrifying: "Polio."

There might be no more story if not for an invitation FDR receives from George Foster Peabody, the philanthropist who founded the Peabody Awards in broadcasting (and this film is a good candidate to receive one). Peabody suggests FDR visit Warm Springs, Ga., where mineral water bubbles out of the ground at a therapeutic 90 degrees or so.

Throughout the film, we see FDR not as a Saint Franklin but as a man with flaws, doubts and vulnerabilities. He is deeply embittered about having been "selected" to suffer from a debilitating disease, but the small group of afflicted people he encounters at Warm Springs becomes a community and FDR their de facto president. We can't expect Branagh to do an impersonation or caricature, meanwhile, and yet his limitations in the role do hamper the film. He has the wrong body type, he doesn't tilt his head at the right angle, his smile never seems as wily, and so on.

Kathy Bates arrives halfway through the story as Helena Mahoney, a physical therapist who provides plenty of psychological therapy, too. The movie builds toward a climax: FDR is to nominate Al Smith as the presidential candidate at the Democratic convention. His real challenge will be "walking" to the lectern as if he really can walk -- his feet in braces and his son Elliott close by his side to help sustain the illusion of mobility.

Smith, listening on the radio, is at first concerned about FDR's tumultuous reception but then asks, "Why am I worried? He'll be dead in a year."

David Paymer is important to the film as Louie Howe, the right-hand man who never stops believing in FDR and clearly loves him like a brother. There are great set pieces, like FDR elatedly conquering a hand-controlled car (the old cars in the film, minor detail though it may be, are beautiful, and so is the train). And though sentiment is used sparingly, there's a splendidly moving scene in which Roosevelt bids farewell to the wheelchair community at Warm Springs. Your eyes are unlikely to be any drier than the springs are.

But the movie's tone is, finally, not sentimental but candid and unflinching -- one chapter, and a decisive one, from an immensely poignant profile in courage.

Dustin Hoffman may have gotten on your nerves in "Rain Man," but imagine if he had shouted or shrieked all his dialogue instead of mumbling it -- and if he weren't so accomplished an actor. Rosie O'Donnell plays a Rain-Mannish role in "Riding the Bus With My Sister," CBS's Sunday movie (tomorrow night at 9 on Channel 9), and rare is the moment when you don't want to bean her -- or at least somehow chase her away.

O'Donnell, who also executive-produced the film (often a bad sign), plays Beth, who is brash and sloppy and mentally disabled. She can function on a day-to-day level, at least if she confines herself to her routine of traveling around town by transferring from bus to bus, then going home at night as if after a long day's work. Of course, shouting is work, kind of, especially when one does it incessantly.

Meanwhile, across the country, Beth's sister Rachel, who basically corresponds to the Tom Cruise character in "Rain Man," is Beth's opposite, a successful commercial photographer whose memories of childhood with Beth are not particularly pleasant -- and they pop up every few minutes in flashbacks. The two little girls in the flashbacks are very cute indeed.

Rachel, played by Andie MacDowell, goes to visit Beth and learns that life isn't all business and checkbooks and grouchy, gorgeous fashion models. Told (coldly) that she is "cold" by her boyfriend, Rachel warms up, slowly, to Beth, whom everybody seems to adore, and eventually they become good friends and real sisters. We're giving nothing away by telling you all this because anybody with any movie-watching experience will see the plot's turns, denouement and "message" coming from a great, great distance.

Maybe someday someone will dare to make a movie about a mentally unbalanced person who is nothing but a pain in the neck and has nothing to teach anyone. We don't mean to be cold ourselves, or cynical and mean, but the situation and relationships in this film have been mined so many times in movie after movie that you'd think writer Joyce Eliason (adapting a book by Rachel Simon) and director Anjelica Huston would have said to each other somewhere along the line, "Wait a minute -- why don't we try something new?"

Beth depends on the kindness of strangers, who obligingly become friends and don't seem to mind that she yells at them, and everybody else, virtually all the time. An especially accommodating bus driver tells Rachel how he came to be fond of Beth: "I started looking forward to that big smile," he says. What big smile? O'Donnell plays Beth wearing what look like upside-down dentures and a nearly perpetual crabby frown. She seldom smiles and has few ingratiating moments. But according to movie mythology, a character like Beth has mystical access to magical insights that only people in her condition get to experience.

Okay, fine, but it's not made clear what these fantastic hidden truths might be -- the ones the rest of us miss because we don't stop and smell the roses and all that. It's a nice cliche, but it fails to take into account realities such as big sharp thorns and rose fever. Good grief, there could be a bee hiding in one of those roses just waiting to sting you on the nose and make it swell up like a soccer ball. Sometimes it is highly advisable to leave the damn roses alone and keep walking.

MacDowell is, as virtually always, a sweetly ingratiating presence, but gifted with acting talent though she is, even she can't make Rachel's sudden transformation from Beth-basher to Beth-booster believable. When the two sisters finally part, as indeed we know they must, we're supposed to share in Rachel's sorrow and sense of enlightenment. But it's really just as easy to imagine that she's thinking, "Well, I'm glad that's over. Now I can get back to New York, where everybody's crazy so it isn't noticed as much."