If a person were to look at Netflix’s roster of original content there are some solid movies (the likes of Beast of No Nation) and some not so epic (not enough people care about these films to be truly considered epic) failures (I’m speaking of Adam Sandler films’ and there’s a surprising, but unfortunate large sum of them). Barry I’m glad to proclaim falls in the former group.

Barry, a drama steeped in idealism directed by Vikram Gandhi, is situated in  a vision of New York that is diverse, but not integrated. The whites go to the Yale club, and the blacks attend bonkers house parties. Its a place the movie would like us to believe is without many Obama’s (half-black, half-white) and that its a place that Obama would have to resort to hanging out with a degenerate of Middle Eastern descent. New York in this story is not a cultural melting pot, but a place where such different flavors don’t mix, but repeal from each other. This New York is a confused place and its a place especially adapted to shaping a confused young man in return. The director makes a persuasive case for this being the vision of New York that could unleash the full potential of a young Barack Obama.

Is this rendition of Obama more of an idea than an actual human being? Yes, but Obama is a special exception where it makes sense for him to be viewed as an idea. Certain people, certain presidents in their most inspirational are symbolic of an idea or era. Obama’s legacy will focus more on the underlying meanings of his presidency, in contrast to a Bill Clinton whose personal charms and down fallings are what will be remembered not the larger picture meaning of his presidency. Obama in a cinematic depiction should be viewed in the same light as a Reagan or a Lincoln. Those two presidents served as symbols for different ideas one of an anxiety-ridden era and an ideological movement, the other of race relations and state’s rights, however, they are unique in their ability to stand as the figurehead of a bigger picture and that is the category Obama falls in.

There’s a scene where Obama strolls down a sidewalk in New York, but the sidewalk was more of a snapshot of that era’s struggles with racial identity. On one side of the street there is a guy selling required black literature like The Souls of Black Folk and the Invincible Man, while a little farther down the street is a group of Five Percenters attempting to spread their radical message. In that one scene, Barry is not a real character, but just a vessel for the audience to look through. Barry is a character that allows us not to see into the inner turmoil of Obama, but the outer turmoil of Obama’s world.