Hulu’s Hillary is an inti­mate por­trait of a polar­is­ing figure

First Lady, Sen­a­tor, Sec­re­tary of State are all titles held by a woman whose name draws equal amounts of ire and admi­ra­tion. She won the pop­u­lar vote but lost the elec­tion. Her hus­band had an affair and she didn’t leave him, the ensu­ing pri­vate pain played out in a pub­lic forum.

You might think you know Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, but Nanette Burstein’s four-part biog­ra­phy peels back the lay­ers of an often reluc­tant par­tic­i­pant in the media cir­cus with vary­ing results. Enlight­en­ing behind-the-scenes cam­paign videos, inter­views with key fig­ures, and archival footage depict the pub­lic pop­u­lar­i­ty roller coast­er, under­scor­ing why she is polar­is­ing on both the left and right side of the aisle.

Div­ing back into the polit­i­cal mael­strom of the 2016 US pres­i­den­tial race might not sound too appeal­ing, but there is much more to the Clin­ton sto­ry than this failed attempt to become the first female pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Every aspect of her career is cov­ered, start­ing with the col­lege com­mence­ment speech that first pro­pelled into the nation­al media. Ditch­ing her pre­pared remarks, she chal­lenged the con­de­scend­ing com­ments made by Repub­li­can guest speak­er Sen­a­tor Edward Brook. This flash of unvar­nished youth­ful opti­mism is in oppo­si­tion to the cau­tious fig­ure who pro­vokes sus­pi­cion from detrac­tors regard­ing her under­ly­ing motives.

After decades of media scruti­ny focus­ing on her lack of charis­ma, appear­ance, and behav­iour it is jar­ring to see a young woman who doesn’t bear those scars. Bern­stein effec­tive­ly uses these flash points as mark­ers to speak to a larg­er point about the armour she has built up over the years.

Debut­ing at Sun­dance ear­li­er this year, it is impos­si­ble not to com­pare this to anoth­er doc­u­men­tary hit from the film fes­ti­val, Tay­lor Swift: Miss Amer­i­cana. Authen­tic­i­ty and lik­a­bil­i­ty are inescapable dis­cus­sion points that often focus on appear­ance and behav­iour. Both women are equal­ly vil­i­fied and beloved, pop music and pol­i­tics aren’t worlds apart when it comes to optics and opin­ions about women at the top of their game.

Where­as Swift was crit­i­cised for being too apo­lit­i­cal, Clin­ton drew con­dem­na­tion ear­ly in her career for not con­form­ing to the typ­i­cal wife role of a ris­ing polit­i­cal star. When Bill Clin­ton was elect­ed Gov­er­nor of Arkansas in 1978, Hillary Rod­ham con­tin­ued to prac­tice law. Her hair­style, lack of make­up and over­sized glass­es didn’t fall in line with con­ven­tions, nor did her rad­i­cal deci­sion to not take her husband’s name. This is far from the last time that she adjust­ed her behav­iour and appear­ance to ben­e­fit both Bill and her own career.

One of the strengths of Burstein’s sto­ry­telling is how she weaves Clinton’s past with the present, detail­ing how each vic­to­ry and loss along the way informs the present-day per­cep­tion. Start­ing with Hillary as a young girl full of hope, the time­line criss­cross­es until it comes full cir­cle, bal­anc­ing the 2008 and 2016 cam­paigns with her rela­tion­ship with Bill. It is near­ly impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate pub­lic opin­ion of Hillary from her hus­band, how­ev­er, Berstein gives her sub­ject enough space to tell her own sto­ry across each chapter.

Con­sid­er­ing how volatile the cur­rent polit­i­cal land­scape is there is an ele­ment of déjà vu when the dis­cus­sion cen­tres on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry against Bernie Sanders — the head­line-mak­ing sound­bite about Sanders’ lack of pop­u­lar­i­ty will do lit­tle to warm her detrac­tors. The han­dling of Mon­i­ca Lewin­sky is anoth­er com­plex and unavoid­able moment, which shows Hillary’s unshak­able abil­i­ty to stay com­posed even when the most dif­fi­cult moments of her life are put under the microscope.

Yet this four-hour doc­u­men­tary doesn’t suc­ceed in break­ing through Clinton’s pol­ished veneer. She is cast as a sto­ic fig­ure who has spent a life­time per­fect­ing an image of seren­i­ty, even dur­ing her dark­est moments. An engag­ing polit­i­cal pro­file, then, but one with plen­ty of baggage.

Hillary is avail­able now on Hulu and will air on Sky Doc­u­men­taries this Spring.