‘Pelosi in the House’: What new documentary about Nancy Pelosi is emerging?

In “Pelosi in the House,” documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi’s film about her mother, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the click of high heels is constant in the various corridors of power.

“My entire adult life, I’ve been two steps behind you with this camera, trying to keep up with you,” Alexandra says off-camera as she races the fast-moving congresswoman in the U.S. Capitol. “Mom, do you realize that? You’re walking briskly. It’s hard to keep up with you.”

“I’m a horse, not a show horse,” old Pelosi replies.

The HBO documentary, which will premiere Tuesday, briefly looks at the California Democrat’s upbringing in a religious home of Catholic politicians in Baltimore and his three decades in Congress. speaker of the house.

Even Alexandra’s assemblage of various pumps (blue, yellow, pink) that Pelosi wore during her six presidential term is part of the history of the Ring Road. However, the film mainly focuses on the Trump presidency, the most difficult and dangerous period in the 82-year-old actor’s career.

Nancy Pelosi announced last month that she would not run for another term as Speaker of the House after a kidnapping attempt went wrong. For political reasons, an intruder broke into her San Francisco home and attacked her 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. He received serious injuries that he is still recovering from. Prosecutors allege that the suspect, who planned to attack Pelosi, is charged with multiple federal and state charges, including assaulting a US official’s family member and attempting to kidnap a federal official.

While the documentary doesn’t cover the attack, it captures the disturbing escalation of threats and violence against politicians and public officials, from the provocative “death panel” hysteria before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 to the deadly riot in the United States. US Capital on January 6, 2021.

“Pelosi in the House” is not a risky political production, a biographical deep dive, or an official look at a lifetime of government service, as in the 2018 documentary “John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls.” This is a girl’s ode to her mother, designed to humanize a brutally targeted leader at a particularly dangerous time.

Candid interviews and footage that only a girl can get is the main attraction of “Pelosi at Home”. While the speaker is doing laundry at home in his pajamas, he is negotiating over the phone with then-Vice President Mike Pence. In office, he is embarrassed and amused by memories of then-President Trump’s viral, condescending applause during his first State of the Union speech in 2018. breaks his oath.

Big Paul is shown throughout the movie napping in a chair at home, or standing in his office or out of the limelight while Nancy takes the stage. When Alexandra turns her camera to him at a work party and asks why she’s there, she replies, “I’m just here for the peanuts.” “You made that joke last year,” she says. “It’s good to be consistent,” she mocks.

But in more foreboding moments, you’ll see Paul Pelosi being harassed outside his home by Iraq war protesters, or when he was in DC asking someone on his cell phone why the house wasn’t locked. He looks vulnerable as his wife is driven by the iron will of a warrior.

All in all, the film is a portrait of Nancy Pelosi’s tireless devotion to her country and principles, despite its cost, but it is unlikely that critics of Pelosi will see it that way. When Alexandra asks her mother how she’s coping with all that grudge, the speaker recalls something she’s read overseas: “There was a saying in an African hospital: ‘One day when I die and I go to meet my creator happily… he will say to me, “Show me your scars.” And “Was there nothing worth fighting for?”