Six decades after his death, the image most Americans still have of Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the jaunty optimist leading America through the Great Depression and to victory in World War II.
By design, Americans of his era didn't see him as a man who lost the use of his legs to polio at the age of 39. A man who not only gave up his political ambitions but also abandoned his family and pretty much abandoned hope.
HBO's "Warm Springs" is the story of FDR's road from despair to hope, from self-involvement to empathy for those who most need help. And Kenneth Branagh is nothing short of brilliant in bringing this unknown Roosevelt to life.
"Warm Springs," which premieres Saturday at 9:30 p.m. on HBO, opens with a supremely self-confident FDR aiming straight for the White House. Or, at least, being aimed there by political operative Louis Howe (David Paymer). But an affair with his wife's personal secretary may end his marriage to Eleanor (Cynthia Nixon) — except that his formidable mother (Jane Alexander, who played Eleanor in the 1976 miniseries "Eleanor and Franklin") won't hear of it.
The marriage is on shaky ground when Franklin contracts polio in 1921. And he refuses all help, wallowing in self-pity. Drinking. And dealing with the fact that he can't even get in and out of bed without help.
Desperate, he travels to a broken-down Georgia resort in hopes that the hot mineral springs will help him walk again. A child of privilege, he's shocked to see how the rural poor live. And, forced to confront his own disability, he becomes passionate about helping the less fortunate.
With the help of the Warm Springs proprietor (Tim Blake Nelson) and a nurse (Kathy Baker), FDR expands his horizons from his search for a cure for himself to a search for a cure for all polio victims — and help for the downtrodden.
Working from a script by Margaret Nagle under the direction of four-time Emmy-winner Joseph Sargent, Branagh brings FDR to life as a fallible character with great potential. "Warm Springs" is not a whitewash about a unfailingly heroic character, it's a multilayered portrayal of a highly flawed man who begins by covering his own fears with pompous bravado and ends up taking joy in the progress of young polio victims — progress he's unable to make himself.
Branagh makes you believe in this man as he's suffering from his own fears and frustrations. And you can feel his anger when FDR discovers that a train conductor has left a wheelchair-bound teenager alone in a baggage car for two days. He's so enraged he physically attacks the man from his own wheelchair.
In a parallel storyline, we see Eleanor — guided by Howe — emerge from her painfully shy shell and become a politically astute woman who will someday be perhaps the most high-profile first lady in American history.
And, as Eleanor and Franklin grow, they find a way to put their marriage back together while they find a way to fulfill their political destinies.
"Warm Springs" is about character, however, not politics. It ends in 1928 when FDR appears at the Democratic National Convention — a moment that set him on the road to the White House four years later.
It's an inspiring tale that takes a legend and makes him a man.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com