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Netflix’s ‘Barry’ is a grounded & loving portrait of a man apart

There’s an iconic photo of Barack Obama taken by Pete Souza in the first 100 days of his presidency. It’s a silhouette shot of the president staring out the Green Room window: He is, for all intents, alone. Photographs like this are iconic of most presidents, but they’ve played a huge role in shaping the mythos of Obama’s person and presidency in particular. Vikram Gandhi’s “Barry” — a movie about President Barack Obama’s days as an undergrad at Columbia University — takes the captured still of that solitary, thoughtful mind and gives it life.

The movie begins with a young Barack Obama (Devon Terrell, in his screen debut) transfers from Occidental College in California to Columbia, in New York: “There is an old saying that there are things a man can only learn in a city,” says his father in a letter. “I have found this to be true, but do not be distracted, my son.”

The city provides a number of distractions, primarily in the form of friends Saleem (Avi Nash), a Pakistani friend from Occidental; PJ (Jason Mitchell), a black grad student in the business program; and white girlfriend Charlotte (Anya Taylor Joy). Although partisan politics play little role in the movie, race factors heavily. Charlotte has been to Kenya, seems to know Harlem better than Barry does, and falls into the trap of believing that her cosmopolitanism unites them. His friends see Barry’s identity more clearly. “They will never accept us, my brother,” Saleem says; when PJ learns Barry’s background he adds, “You a whole different type of motherf*****, B. You do realize that, right?”

In a recent interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Obama pointed out that the very background that makes him unique was part of his appeal to both black and white voters. A mother from Kansas, a father from Kenya, an upbringing in Hawaii away from the worst of post-Jim Crow racism and segregation, a white parent and grandparents who treated him with love and respect. In the movie, and we can assume in the man’s life, that same background seems to have isolated him.

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“Barry” could easily have crumbled under the weight of its greater subject. It would be impossible to forget who that young man walking through the streets of New York and sitting in classrooms at Columbia will one day become. Every mention of politics, from a Jesse Jackson speech to a discussion on the Greek Republic during class, is heightened, as if every word influenced later policy. But “Barry” comes close. By bringing the emotional struggles of a biracial college student in 1980s New York into focus, Barry becomes less a movie about our 44th president and more a painful coming of age story about a young man dealing with an ongoing identity crisis. “Barry” — the film, its namesake — is allowed to be Barry.

Some of the best moments of the movie take place when Barry’s alone: Waiting for the subway, listening to music, walking the city, smoking a cigarette on campus bench overlooking Riverside Park, trying to compose a letter to his father. When he’s thinking, the camera captures him in profile or silhouette, sometimes with over the shoulder shots offering a glimpse into his thoughts but never fully immersing the viewer in his point of view. These shots work not only because they somewhat mirror the photographs of Barack Obama we know; they emphasize just how alone he is. He inhabits a place no one in his circle, or the world, can understand.

Not every moment is sobering. It’s charming to watch Barry navigating young adulthood, getting dating advice from Saleem or trying to hook up with Charlotte while she’s watching the mayoral debate, or avoiding embarrassment from his mother Ann (Ashley Judd) when she makes an impromptu visit.

(The whole section of the movie with Ashley Judd is wonderful; Terrell plays “Barry’s” loving frustration with his mother perfectly, and Judd, who keeps her character from becoming an aging feminist hippy stereotype, returns with a knowing sympathy, recognizing her own lack of perspective.)

Fortunately, by the time the novelty of seeing Barry do regular college things wears off, the conflict of the movie is ready to unfold: Barry’s unraveling relationship with his white girlfriend, well-intentioned but somewhat race blind.

Barry: I’m sure some of [your parents‘] very best friends are black.
Charlotte: They are, actually.
Barry: I was…
Charlotte: — I know what you were doing. The question is… why you feel the need to do it.

Charlotte is, of course, also blind to her parents’ own prejudice. On his way to a meet the parents dinner, Barry stops in the restaurant bathroom. As he washes his hands and stares at himself in the mirror, a white man mistakes him for the bathroom attendant: Clearly, and as Barry learns immediately, Charlotte’s father, it goes unmentioned, but it’s a moment that ruptures any relationship they might have had.

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And it’s not just Columbia’s white community Barry feels separate from; he never feels quite black enough for surrounding Harlem, either. Barry grows more isolated, more aware of the position he inhabits, even when his white friends can’t see it and his black friends deal with it by joking uncomfortably. Things finally come to a head when PJ takes him to a party in the projects, only for Barry to talk to the wrong girl and get punched.

Barry, angry, hurting more than physically, calls out the people around him one by one, taking an active role in his isolation. “Five days in Kenya doesn’t mean you understand who I am,” he tells Charlotte. “You’re an asshole, but you’re alright,” he tells a fellow student who “rescues” him from an altercation with a campus police officer. To PJ, he says nothing, but that’s enough. When Charlotte and Barry finally part ways at her sister’s wedding, Barry leaves, walking towards the camera in shadow.

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But of course not all iconic photographs of Obama are solo, and of course the movie can’t end that way: Barry walks onto the basketball court, where a young African American kid’s shooting hoops. “Want to play horse?” Barry asks him. Almost two decades later, that same man will stand in the Oval Office. A young black child, the son of a staffer, will ask Obama a question. “I want to know if my hair is just like yours.”

And Obama will reply, “Why don’t you touch it so you can see for yourself?” And he will lower his head, so the boy can check.