Review: "The Nine Lives of Marion Barry"
Reason to watch: The rise and fall (and rise and fall and rise . . . how many is that?) of Marion Barry is a story worth telling.
When/Where: Monday night at 9 on HBO
'The Nine Lives of Marion Barry' on HBO
Photo credit: Getty/Michael Loccisano | NEW YORK - AUGUST 06: Washington Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry attends the HBO documentary Screening of "Nine Lives of Marion Barry" at the HBO Theater on August 6, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for HBO)
THE DOCUMENTARY "The Nine Lives of Marion Barry"
WHEN | WHERE Monday night at 9 on HBO
REASON TO WATCH The rise and fall (and rise and fall and rise . . . how many is that?) of Marion Barry is a story worth telling. Tonight's documentary from Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer tells it with all the fascination, incredulity and dismay that can be squeezed into 80 minutes of riveting national and individual, political and psycho-racial history.
VOTE: Did you like these series finales? | Did you watch these Fox shows? | Who are the kings and queens of late-night TV?
WHAT IT'S ABOUT Who knew? To most people outside Washington, D.C., Barry has devolved from successful mayor to gag line, a cautionary tale about absolute power, crack cocaine, women, booze, prison, probation for tax crimes and - what was it last month? - an arrest for allegedly stalking an ex-girlfriend.
As we learn from this aptly titled film, however, Barry has been an astonishingly resilient, peculiarly self-deluding, very nearly heroic character. Born 72 years ago to cotton pickers in Mississippi, he was working on a doctorate in chemistry when he quit to become a major civil-rights activist in Washington, where an overwhelmingly black population was still ruled by Congress, with no vote, mayor or government.
The documentary toggles from the '60s to today, weaving footage and interviews with black leaders and journalists who covered the city's historic "home rule" empowerment in 1974. Much is left out, including a kidney transplant and three of four wives. Even abridged, his portrait keeps changing as radically as his face. There's the charismatic young activist in animal-print clothes, then the savvy leader of the largest middle-class black community in America. We recognize the bloated foxy face caught - and taped - with cocaine in the hotel room of an old flame in a 1990 FBI sting and, after six months in jail, the reborn figure who gets re-elected mayor from 1995 to '99.
By his 2004 run for councilman of the city's poorest neighborhood, he is stringy, frail, staggered beneath years of corruption and debauchery. But he wins, then wins again and, despite more scandals and positive drug tests, bounces back to defend legacy and electorate. People on the street call him a hero, a thug and a scoundrel. As his elegant third wife, Effi, says, "It is difficult to determine what's fact and what's fiction. It's all possible."
BOTTOM LINE This is riveting history.
GRADE A-
