Not every president is made of the right materials to create an interesting docudrama. But, if anyone was made for one, it’s Barack Obama. Barry gives Obama a whole new persona as Devon Terrell convincingly embodies college-age Barry as he enters Columbia University for his junior year in 1981. He’s quiet, attentive, and you get the sense that his brain is absorbing everything around him as his eyes wander around taking note of each setting he finds himself in. He arrives at Columbia with an intense desire to learn, but this quickly becomes overshadowed by his social displacement.
The film focuses on Barry as he navigates his own race—his mother a white woman and his father from Kenya. He attends classes with white peers, plays basketball with his black neighbors, dates a white woman from a wealthy liberal family, and goes to a party in the projects. The majority of the film is watching these contrasting interactions to setup an understanding of the confusion he faces. The first thing you’ll think—Barack Obama parties too? It will take a few scenes to see through his presidential persona to the unfamed young man put before you to dissect.
As he flip flops between the two highly defined worlds of black and white, his understanding of himself unravels. He says explicitly that he doesn’t belong anywhere because of his race, and while that’s important for the viewer to understand, it isn’t all that should be seen. Race doesn’t burn through the integrity of this story so that it’s all you’re left with. Rather, the audience sees his lack of comfort set him on his course. As said in the film “You know what that makes you? American.” There is no resolution to Barry’s story in the scope of the film. And while that would usually set everyone’s teeth on edge, I think we already know enough in this case.