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HBO's 'Confirmation' is more than a history lesson about Hill and Thomas
| The Boston Globe | - 1 hour ago |
'Confirmation,”
HBO's striking drama about Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court hearings and
Anita Hill's testimony against him in 1991, is as timely as timely
gets.
HBO’s ‘Confirmation’ is more than a history lesson about Hill and Thomas
Frank Masi/HBO
Kerry Washington is Anita Hill in the HBO movie “Confirmation.”
By Matthew Gilbert
Globe Staff
‘Confirmation,” HBO’s striking
drama about Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court hearings and Anita Hill’s
testimony against him in 1991, is as timely as timely gets. The film
seems to have emerged out of the obsessions foremost in America’s
collective unconsciousness at this very moment. It’s like an anguish
dream we’re waking up to, a fantasia of cultural, political, and sexual
doubts coupled with images of Coke cans, pubic hairs, lie detectors, and
Mad Hatter-like senators with very bad hair.
The movie, which
premieres Saturday at 8 p.m., was originally planned to mark the 25th
anniversary of Thomas’s hearings before the US Senate Judiciary
Committee. But it also happens to land smack in the middle of another
highly partisan Supreme Court muddle, as we wait to see if the Senate
will act on Merrick Garland’s nomination for the vacancy created by
Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February. In case we think these
nominations always go off without a hitch, the movie not only details
the Thomas-Hill ordeal but opens with news footage of President Reagan’s
failed 1987 Robert Bork nomination, and of activist Florynce Kennedy
urging, “We have to Bork Thomas.”Other timely issues suffusing “Confirmation”: Huge questions of gender inequality, the role race plays in our justice system and whether Hill would have gone further — or Thomas, with his line about “high-tech lynching,” not as far — if they’d been white, and the way the media enables political theatrics, particularly when Congress is in a broken state. The story, well cast with Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas, may be fitted with dated shoulder pads and passé eyeglasses, but there is no sense of nostalgia afoot. Indeed, all of the clashes and concerns raised in the script could easily be continued today — and will be, as viewers discuss the film.
So for relevancy reasons alone, “Confirmation” is interesting viewing. It’s fascinating, in the way “Mad Men” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson” were fascinating, inviting us to weigh what has and what has not changed since the events at hand. We seem to be more attuned to the subtleties of sexual harassment since 1991, for example, largely thanks to the Hill-Thomas hearings. Hill, now a Brandeis professor, never intended to testify against Thomas, her former boss at the Department of Education and Equal Opportunity Commission. But her interview with the FBI, in which she alleged Thomas had made sexual overtures, was leaked to the press.
Hill’s claims didn’t persuade the Senate, but they educated the public on how harassment can be a climate as much as a direct threat. When Senator Alan Simpson (Peter McRobbie) challenges Hill in the film on why she kept in touch with Thomas after she claimed he harassed her, she says, “That’s a very good question, and I am sure I cannot answer that to your satisfaction,” aware that it’s all about the psychology of victimhood. Now, perhaps, many of us understand that better.
At the same time, as Washington’s Hill says to an aide to Senator Edward Kennedy who urges her to pursue the allegations in the first place, “The victim tends to become the villain.” The re-victimization of those who come forth can still be cruel, as those making early allegations against Bill Cosby learned. It is excruciating to watch the committee question Hill in “Confirmation” without respect or compassion, forcing her to repeat sordid details that clearly disgust her. Led by Senator Joe Biden, the committee chairman (played with an uncanny likeness by Greg Kinnear), the questioners seem to be punishing her. The early agreement that her testimony won’t go public? Sorry about that.
Many will talk about whether the movie, written by Susannah Grant, sides with Hill or Thomas. Senators Simpson and John Danforth, who also served on the committee, have already said it’s one-sided, with Simpson calling it “unfair to everyone but Anita Hill.” I suspect viewers will judge the question of fairness based on their own pre-existing sympathies. The inclusion of a few minor or forgotten details from both sides — for example, the emergence of another woman, played by Jennifer Hudson, who claimed Thomas harassed her but was not allowed to testify — will certainly add fuel to still burning fires. To me, the movie largely stays out of extremes of opinion, with the main goal being to present the public side of the story for reassessment. The emphasis on 1991 news clips — some with actors digitized into them — adds to that sense that “Confirmation” is more about the spectacle than about he-said-she-said and who should have won the day.
I do think that most viewers will agree on one point, though: The Senate comes out of “Confirmation” looking just awful — smug, divisive, and spineless.
Washington captures Hill nicely — her reticence, in particular. The script makes it clear that Hill was pulled against her will into the fray, and we can always see that anxiety playing behind her more stoic front. The script isn’t trying to take us into Hill’s life and personality — that would be an entirely different kind of project — and yet Washington provides a strong sense of the woman and her complex reactions. Pierce, too, is just right here, with his bottled-up anger. Around them are many small but fine portraits — Alison Wright (Martha on “The Americans”) as Thomas’s supportive wife, Bill Irwin as a nasty Danforth, and Treat Williams as Kennedy, hobbled by his own past. Like “Confirmation,” they’re sharply etched.
CONFIRMATION
Starring: Wendell Pierce, Kerry Washington, Greg Kinnear, Grace Gummer, Alison Wright, Eric Stonestreet, Jeffrey Wright, Dylan Baker, Jennifer Hudson, Kimberly Elise, Treat Williams, Bill Irwin, Peter McRobbie, Malcolm Gets, Erika Christensen
On: HBO, Saturday at 8 p.m.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.
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