Fact-Checking 'Lincoln': He's Realistic; His Advisers Aren't. Once director Michell has painted the picture of FDR and his women, he shifts seamlessly to the arrival of King George VI (Samuel West) and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman). Print . A lot of bad words it is a movie of a lot of bad words. Because Hyde Park projects the values of the sexual revolution onto the New Deal president and his wife, some might presumptively classify it as a political exercise in character assassination. Historical epics produced by Hollywood inevitably say more about the era in which they're produced than the eras they present. The historical details, however, are just set dressing. The tone is largely worshipful—this is Spielberg, after all—but the time we spend with Lincoln the human adds more weight to the other material. This is not the critical deconstruction of a myth; it is the exploitation of that myth for box-office success. The great president is shown to be a bit of a free spirit, indulging in more than one love affair at a time. The scene is brief and non-graphic, with a little rhythmic movement seen. The man it presents, however, is defined not by his humanity but by base desires and embarrassing secrets. Olivia Williams establishes Eleanor’s independence and earnest idealism as well as her acceptance of her husband’s relationships with women. Severely limited physically, Roosevelt nurtured two outlets for relaxation: The women who gave him a private life and the hand-controlled car that allowed him to tear through the woods and fields of the Hudson Valley countryside he loved so much. Despite the extraordinary tension be­tween England and America in 1939, director Roger Michell focuses instead on the ways Roosevelt chose to escape the pressures of his presidency. | Hyde Park seems similar on the surface. Roosevelt drives Daisy to a secluded meadow and coaxes her into giving him a hand job in the car. Thirteen Days dramatically fills in the details of JFK's most important foreign policy success, the Cuban Missile Crisis, with nary a word of the president's legendary personal life. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth are soon to arrive. The other characters are that way, too. Despite that shadow, the movie concentrates unapologetically on the recreational side of Roosevelt’s life on his favorite turf – the family home in Hyde Park. The real purpose of the film is to give audiences a glimpse at the president's sordid personal life. There is simply no other coherent thought to be found in the film. Plot Summary Lucy Rutherford Mercer, who would be with Roosevelt when he dies in 1945, is referred to as a love from long ago. Hyde Park on Hud­son is an unexpected pleasure. The story of the King and Queen's weekend with the president is given no thematic connection to the love affair, and none of the characters reveal much sign of intelligence or humanity outside of their most primal impulses.