A couple weeks ago, I watched The Final Year, a documentary that follows several members of the Obama administration during their final year in office. There’s plenty to criticize the doc for — mainly that it never really takes a critical eye to the characters or events it covers — but there’s still a lot to enjoy about it, particularly because of the incredible level of access it has.
The documentary’s biggest success is in how close it gets to its subjects. We get to be right next to the people who were making immense foreign policy decisions, where they suddenly feel surprisingly normal and human — just some people trying to do their best. Better, we get to see them struggling with issues beyond their control and dealing with fights...
