Greg Barker’s slick, fly-on-the-wall documentary tracks Barack Obama’s final year in office, focusing on his administration’s foreign policy. Interesting, given that this part of the Obama presidency has been robustly criticised, though perhaps the film’s purpose is to reframe this narrative. Barker is granted extraordinary access to key members of Obama’s foreign policy team, including UN ambassador Samantha Power and strategic communications adviser Ben Rhodes as well as the president himself, which gives the behind-the-scenes White House footage a pleasurable, West Wing-esque patter.
We’re shown Obama giving a speech in Hiroshima, Power addressing the Bring Back Our Girls campaign in Nigeria, and former secretary of state John Kerry attending Syrian peace negotiations in Vienna, missions that showcase the team’s glossy idealism and commitment to securing global peace through diplomacy. Power, in particular, is a fascinating, fiercely smart character whose modus operandi is to reject the idea that a country’s “values” might be at odds with their “interests”, a binary the film suggests Obama also tried to break. In this sense, it feels exactly like a campaign film (an effective one, too), if the campaign is to secure Obama’s legacy as somebody who tried to use his power for good.
What’s missing is the inherent drama of the looming election, which the film chooses not to engage with. The team seem nonplussed about the possibility of a Trump presidency when pressed on the matter, and so when we see him win the election, theirs is a reaction of muted shock. It’s chilling to witness Obama’s cool intelligence and statesmanlike composure, given the knowledge of who will come to replace him.
