STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM “Southside with You”

Just walk around a street, a park, or in a museum, and you’ll find a lot of walking around. Who’d know that some of those people would later define a generation?

Directed and written by Richard Tanne, Southside with You is the story of Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama’s first date, though Michelle initially doesn’t consider it as such because he invited her out on false pretenses.

As they stroll through various locations, they talk about their lives and their struggles of growing up in late 1980s Chicago.

The film is a unique approach, at least for me, where the biopic is not spanning over multiple years, but an intimate look of two famous people and what they were doing for about ten hours.

Maybe it was because of how Barack is the more influential figure, but he gets a scene that proves how good of a speaker he is. It’s a scene the audience is expecting, and it’s a great monologue scene. And it subverts expectation with a certain word Americans would associate with him.

Michelle doesn’t have a scene like that, though she is the stronger character of the two in terms of writing. She is the sterner, stricter type with a set of rules she abides by because it’s hard enough for a woman to be working at a law firm. Add to the fact that she’s African-American?

The Chicago landscape isn’t really showed off, save for a scene where the two are talking at a harbor. But Chicago culture is certainly in the spotlight, based on the locations they go to.

I found out about the film when I had to watch it for a job. The concept of it sounded uninteresting to me, but as I was going through it, I realized it was mostly a walk-and-talk film with only two actors, though this film had more characters spread throughout the film compared to the other films I’ve discussed this month.

Southside with You plays down the political aspect of Barack and Michelle, and focuses more on them as people and how they started out. They have been through a lot, still going through it, and they will help each other get through it.