Kerry Washington as Anita Hill (Photo via HBO)
Nostalgia for the nineties is alive and well on television. First, the sensation of the winter was FX’s American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. And this past weekend, HBO aired Confirmation, a television movie about Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings after being nominated to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, Confirmation does not even come close to meeting the high quality of The People v. O.J. Simpson (though, thankfully, Confirmation features many fewer Kardashians).
Confirmation stars Wendell Pierce as then-Judge Clarence Thomas, who has just been nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. As part of their diligence, staffers for the Senate Judiciary Committee get in touch with Anita Hill (Kerry Washington), a professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Hill, who worked with Thomas at the Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accuses Thomas of repeated sexual harassment. The Judiciary Committee investigates the allegation, but the investigation is soon leaked to the press and becomes public, leading to a political firestorm.
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The People v. O.J. Simpson benefited from being a ten-episode miniseries, with sufficient time to explore each of the characters, including at quieter moments such as late-night conversations between Johnnie Cochran and his wife. Confirmation, on the other hand, feels incredibly rushed, as if the writers bit off way more story than they could chew for a two-hour television movie. The movie jumps right in with Senator Ted Kennedy’s staffer Ricki Seidman (Grace Gummer) calling Hill and setting the entire plot in motion; there is no time to get to know any of the characters before this inciting incident. The film continues to move at breakneck speed, never taking a breath or including quieter moments among characters.
There are also just too many characters for a two-hour movie. In addition to Thomas and Hill, major or semi-major characters include: Senator Kennedy (Treat Williams), Seidman, then-Senator Joe Biden (Greg Kinnear), Biden’s staffer Carolyn Hart (Zoe Lister-Jones), Senator Orrin Hatch (Dylan Baker), Professor Charles Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright), Hill’s friend Shirley Wiegand (Erika Christensen), then-Senator Alan Simpson (Peter McRobbie), then-Senator Arlen Specter (Malcolm Gets), Thomas’s wife Virginia (Alison Wright), then-Senator Jack Danforth (Bill Irwin), and other Thomas accuser Angela Wright (Jennifer Hudson). Instead of trying to include every twist and turn of the saga, the writers would have been better off telling a more narrow story (for example, focusing on Thomas and Hill and minimizing the role of the Senators and staffers).
Confirmation also makes extremely heavy use of news reports for exposition and transitions. This tactic gets old quickly and just seems like a lazy way to move the story along.
As regular readers of my Suits reviews are well aware, I am a big fan of Pierce, best known for playing Detective Bunk Moreland on The Wire. On paper, playing Clarence Thomas should be right in Pierce’s wheelhouse. But disappointingly, Pierce is not given enough to do. Supposedly, despite his taciturn nature on the bench, Clarence Thomas is an extremely outgoing person in private. None of that personality is on display in Confirmation. Instead, the movie merely includes repeated scenes of Thomas scowling or looking sad. The only scene where Pierce really comes alive is during Thomas’s testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee, in which he calls the proceedings a “high tech lynching.” That is the Wendell Pierce I know and love. But scenes like that are few and far between.
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I had the same problem with Thomas’s wife Virginia. Alison Wright is a terrific actress on The Americans, but she just stares forlornly into the distance in virtually every scene. I do not understand why the writers of Confirmation seem so afraid to give Thomas or Virginia a personality.
Not to sound like a broken record, but Washington also is not given enough to do. The story moves so fast that there is not enough time to get to know Hill. One exception is a quick scene in which Hill watches football while preparing for the hearings. But scenes like that are the exception, not the rule. Nevertheless, like Pierce, Washington’s strongest work comes during the hearings, as Hill methodically explains to the all-male panel of Senators about the humiliation she felt due to Thomas’s harassment.
Jeffrey Wright gives the best performance in the film as Ogletree, the professor who leads Hill’s representation. Wright seems like he is having a great time, livening up every scene with his various quips. For example, after Hill laments that Ogletree may not get tenure at Harvard after representing her, Ogletree responds – with a smirk on his face – that he does not care about Harvard (albeit with saltier language) because, after representing Hill, he will be able to land any job in the country. Despite having a small role, the film portrays Ogletree as more of a real person than Thomas or Hill.
I would not recommend Confirmation to anyone except perhaps hard-core Supreme Court nomination aficionados. Nevertheless, given this recent trend of 1990s-based television shows and movies, I can only assume that by the fall, AMC will be airing a limited series about the making of The Secret World of Alex Mack.
Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at [email protected]. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.