DVD: John Adams

Anybody can play the president, Paul Giamatti noted when he picked up an Emmy Award for his portrayal of the title character in the series John Adams. That observation gets one to thinking about the casting decisions reached for earlier presidential biopics -- quickly now, which presidents did Anthony Hopkins and Kenneth Branagh play? -- as well as how well or poorly our Founding Fathers and their successors would fare under the unforgiving glare of television. Can you imagine the mayhem?

And speaking of mayhem, I have been to the cinema and have now seen the trailer for Oliver Stone's W. Between that and Curtis Sittenfeld's roman a clef American Wife, it's shaping up to be some year for the Bush administration, artistically speaking.

For a more overtly patriotic activity, albeit one laced with harrowing historical details, do check out the DVD of the HBO series John Adams. Bibliophiles will appreciate that the inspiration for the program was David McCullough's best-selling biography. Sharp-eyed Virginians will recognize some of the filming locations. And everyone will enjoy the performances, particularly those from the film's trio of Emmy-winning actors: Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin, Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, and of course Giamatti as the second president.

For all its sumptuous period detail and soaring rhetoric, John Adams won't let you forget that the Founders were utterly human, or that they wrestled with issues that bedevil our country to this day.

And if the series is the story of a country, it's also the tale of a marriage -- an often long-distance marriage, politically and intellectually charged, but emotionally stirring. That too is contemporary enough, for all the passage of centuries.

Linney is, not surprisingly, magnificent as Abigail Adams, and her scenes are affecting as anything you'll see this year in film, TV, or theater. She joins fellow Emmy winner Eileen Atkins (Cranford, from my September 7th post) and an array of strong female performers -- Glenn Close's Sisterhood of the TV Drama Divas, if you will -- that give me hope, culturally speaking.

And now the answer to trivia question above: Hopkins played Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon, and Branagh was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in HBO's Warm Springs.

May you have hope and resilience this week and always.