SPEC D: Vikram Gandhi. U.S. 104 min. Sep 10, 6 pm, Ryerson Sep 11, 11:15 am, Isabel Bader. Rating: NNN
Set in the fall of 1981, Barry dramatizes a few months in the life of some kid named Barry Soetoro (Devon Terrell), newly enrolled at Columbia University and trying to figure out who he wants to be. That meant a relationship with a white woman (Anya Taylor-Joy, unrecognizable from last year’s The Witch) and playing a lot of pickup basketball, feeling like he didn’t fully belong either in the white or Black worlds.
Working on what seems to be a pretty modest budget, Gandhi (Kumaré) creates a convincing Koch-era New York, and he’s put together a really solid cast that includes Boyhood’s Ellar Coltrane, Straight Outta Compton’s Jason Mitchell and Ashley Judd as Barry’s mother Ann Dunham.
The result is a decent picture, if one that leans pretty heavily on the future resonance of every interaction and conversation. Barry Soetoro is going to grow up to be Barack Obama, and screenwriter Adam Mansbach seems worried that we might not know that.
The movie tells rather than shows, a mistake Richard Tanne’s genuinely great Young Barack movie Southside With You doesn’t make, being a film about its characters’ present rather than their future. It’s also the reason people will still be watching Southside With You a decade from now instead of Barry.
