One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard. With a relatively modest output compared to other popular historical writers, every one of her books, I would gladly put in your hand.
A bit like Eddie Muller over at Noir Alley, Millard manages to humanize and make her subjects deeply understandable despite the gulf of time and geography. A while back, Jennifer R rec'd, Destiny of the Republic to me, which made me a true Millard fanboy and, these days, I'll happily pre-order any new Millard book when I hear it's available.
Shockingly, her first book, River of Doubt, is not the book which has received an adaptation. No post-Presidency Theodore Roosevelt mapping the Amazon for us. Instead, it's Destiny of the Republic, an account of the extraordinary circumstances that led to the election of James Garfield to the US presidency, and his subsequent assassination by Charles Guiteau (spoilers on basic high school US History).
Most Americans are vaguely aware we had a president named Garfield, and some know he was killed early on in his presidency. What gets lost is the fascinating inflection point US politics were in that saw the Ohioan elected after years of prime 19th-Century corruption. And while some may know Guiteau was, as they, crazy, until I'd read Millard's book, I sure didn't know how Guiteau scrambled along the edges of society, his story reflecting so much of what they don't teach in school about America in the 19th century and what would come to echo through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Now, Netflix has rolled out a star-studded series roughly based on the book and entitled Death By Lighting.
The mini-series uses Millard's book as a framework and jumping off point more than a beat-by-beat guide for telling the story. The book is, after all, a non-fiction historical account, not a novel. To make a TV show, we're going to have to take some license, contract some parts and expand others. Fortunately, it has Betty Gilpin as Lucretia Garfield, so it's already given a few extra stars in our arbitrary rating system.
But, man, all of the casting is so good. Especially if you know a bit about any of the actual people.
Michael Shannon plays the outwardly reserved Garfield who contains multitudes and deep passions, for his wife Lucretia (understandable) but also for the power of government to uplift people, not just to be used as a tool for graft and personal power (cough). Jamie rightfully identified Matthew Macfadyen as Guiteau - and he really manages to capture the unquiet energy of the assassin in a role I hope gets him some notices.
I flipped my lid when the camera swept over and I realized that was not just Roscoe Conkling, but Conkling played by Shea Whigham. What an absolute slam dunk of casting. Bradley Whitford as the dwindling but well-intentioned Blaine is much the same. And Nick Offerman as Chester A. Arthur is (chef's kiss) - and absolutely earns the part. And, yes, I consider Gilpin to be among the absolute best of the current period. Nothing she can't do.
We really are in a unique and odd new era where we can film actors on a street anywhere on the planet (and this was filmed in the Czech Republic, the UK and the US) and double for the city-streets of 19th Century America with utterly convincing detail. We can recreate the great halls used for political party conventions back when they were more than a dog and pony show and where delegates fought it out on the convention hall floor. We get the grand columns of DC and the quiet of the Garfield farm.
That said, the show takes some artistic license and deviates from Millard's work, and I am frankly too ignorant to know the degree of accuracy with which it hews to reality. But I'm guessing they wanted a good show and they aren't making a documentary, so we get some bits in there for drama, especially when it comes to Guiteau's movements and life. It can seem like a patchwork of fantasy and reality - Guiteau was enormously successful at staying one step ahead of anyone expecting him to pay bills, and despite an avowed religious disposition, he seemed devoid of any actual sense of shame or regret, and his moral compass swung wildly. He did dog Garfield in his way. But... his proximity to political figures of Blaine, Arthur and especially the Garfields that the show suggests seems enhanced for drama (and that's fine).
The Garfields, for their part, seem portrayed with attention to detail. This isn't the John Adams mini-series from HBO where we spend a tremendous amount of time on their personal affairs. But for the purposes of the show, the domestic scenes don't lean into anything that for an instant takes you out of the show - even if there's a line or two that refer to things in Millard's book the show doesn't have time to cover.
Maybe they go too far with showing people just being people in this show, but I don't think so. It's refreshing to see names like Conkling treated like the asshole that they were and speaking in plain language. If we've learned anything from the past 30 years of politics, it's that politicians are just people - they aren't walking around speaking in Shakespearean dialog and they aren't working on a plane any higher than the one we live on. What separates them from people like you and me is a mix of circumstance, ambitions and, when we're incredibly lucky, a desire to do good - but that sure is in short supply then and now. So showing people swearing, drinking and looking for sausage (not a euphemism) is hardly some modern rewriting of history.
I was quite moved by the license taken in the show's final moments placing Lucretia Garfield before Guiteau and spelling out the tragedy of the future to come, that his actions, sane or not, were callow and self-serving and in the river of time will lose them both. That's the real fate of men who scramble for personal glory. It's a hell of a concluding statement for a show in any era, and painfully relevant in the here and now.
The show and book are two separate entities, and I loved both. While they certainly reflect one another, and understand why the last third or so of the book was condensed to just a few scenes that I knew would be odd television if carried out, I think they got the basics across.
I will say, the book is one of two or three non-fiction books that left me a bit weepy at the end, and the segments that did so are not included in the show at all, really. So maybe that's something to look for if you're reaching for a book.
Anyhow, once in w hile Netflix surprises me with something solid. There are far worse ways for people to become acquainted with actual historical figures and events and for the stories of those people to speak to us in our present moment.
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