The Final Year–The End of a Term

The Final Year, Greg Barker’s HBO documentary, covers January 2016 to January 2017 of the Barack Obama administration . It is quietly devastating and demoralizing footage of the last twelve months of foreign statesmanship before the Trump administration.

Don’t expect that The Final Year will give you a portrait of the 44th president in the looming shadow of what was to come. The Final Year actually follows Samantha Power, U.N. Ambassador and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, as they almost inexhaustibly pursue Obama’s foreign policy agenda with heart and soul. The empathy they have for global unity is palpable. 

The undoing of every last element of what the people onscreen are busy accomplishing is the not-so-subtle theme of The Final Year. The power of this documentary is gut-wrenching.

Tense, empathetic Samantha Power doesn’t avoid exposure to the horrific pain of parents in refugee camps. She is especially moving as she fights tears in the name of duty, having been an immigrant from Ireland herself. Outraged by an attack on a humanitarian convoy in Syria almost certainly ordered by Putin, Power shouts at the implacable Russian ambassador, “Is there literally nothing that can shame you?”

The tireless 72-year-old John Kerry, who travels by boat amid spectacular but melting Greenland icebergs, is conflicted– as a Vietnam War vet– in his attitude toward military invention in the Middle East. And the brilliant Rhodes, whose magic as a wordsmith provides alchemy to Obama’s speeches in Vietnam, Laos, and Hiroshima, is rendered speechless in the immediate aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s defeat.

While Obama’s intellectual demeanor continues to inspire his staff, The Final Year rather surprisingly also suggests Obama’s emotional distancing, an abstraction or cutting off from what would certainly follow: the eradication of many of the policies his administration fought for. He believes that deaths from global conflict are far fewer compared to the last century and that democracy is going in the right direction. Power and Rhodes, both of whom have great pride and zeal in working for President Obama, nevertheless disagree.

As The Final Year concludes, Obama supporters are likely to find the movie terribly crushing and bleak. And viewers who opposed him? They probably won’t be interested in watching The Final Year at all.

Note:  Available on Netflix as a DVD.