| “WHAT always hurts”, the former United States President Jimmy Carter tells his PA after a filmed interview in Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains (Cert. 15), “is the editing.” Out-of-context remarks, unfortunate facial expressions, disagreeable juxtapositioned images — these are the unkindest cuts of all.
Carter should adopt the late Robert Runcie’s remedy: when on camera, always wave your arms about a lot: it makes editing extremely difficult. (Of course, Archbishop Runcie had the advantage of a son in television to advise him.) Carter can hardly complain, even if we do, about this film, which runs at 127 minutes.
The documentary covers the 2006 American tour in which this 84-year-old energetically promotes his book Palestine: Peace not apartheid. The film is directed by Jonathan Demme, best known for The Silence of the Lambs, but also a prolific maker of documentaries. Cousin Bobby (1992), for instance, recorded the life and work of his relative, an Episcopalian minister in Harlem.
Nor does Demme shy away now from his subject’s Christianity, which is the bedrock on which this indefatigable Nobel Peace Prize-winner builds his quest for reconciliation. He and his wife still read the Bible every night together. In Spanish.
He preaches at Maranatha Baptist Church, Plains (population 635), distinguishing between believing things about Jesus and believing in Jesus; and then goes on to explain the way he tries to practise what he preaches.
Of course, not everyone agrees with him en route regarding his analysis of Israeli oppression in the West Bank and Gaza areas. Carter encounters some extremely unpleasant Zionist demonstrators. Others say that he isn’t even-handed in his treatment, which is probably true. Carter apparently refuses to have formal debate with those who dispute the book’s facts, saying that it would simply become personal. He relates without rancour how the attacks over this have been far worse than they were in the rest of his political life put together.
Carter left the White House in 1981, but those blue eyes still shine brightly as he pursues all that makes for peace and builds up our common life. The film doesn’t give us a man still trying to cling on to a sense of his own importance as a world figure: it is Jesus who continues to motivate his life.
The 1978 Camp David Accords clip where Carter reconciled Egypt and Israel still brings a moistening to the eyes the moment Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin embrace. In this new film, we learn how Carter had them in tears when he appealed to their better natures by looking at grandchildren’s photographs. Then we laugh when Begin praises Carter. “He worked harder than our forebears did in building the pyramids in Egypt.” He still does — praise the Lord.
On release, and showing at the National Film Theatre, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1, until 28 August. Phone 020 7928 3232. www.bfi.org.uk
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