Watch By the People: The Election of Barack Obama For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Let's be realistic.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This is a behind-the-scene of Barack Obama's Presidential campaign. It starts with him watching the mid-term election in 2006. He would announce a few months later. This follows the campaign all the way to the night of victory.This is in the same vein as the great documentary "The War Room (1993)" which followed Bill Clinton's campaign. It is inferior in a couple of ways. It's been done before. It's now more or less a historical document at this point. I would have loved one for W. The other problem is the limited drama.This one follows more with people further down the food chain. "The War Room" followed James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. They were great characters near the top of the food chain. This one is a lot of (to quote Palin) Hopey Changey thing. It follows organizer Ronnie Cho who is representative of the ground troops. The upper level stuff is never quite so compelling. It feels like we're just outside of the war room. It might also be Obama's calm persona injecting into his campaign or that everybody is tapping away at their Blackberry. This is a nice recount of the campaign. I can't help but wonder if Hilary's campaign has a more compelling behind-the-scenes movie.

Whether you like Obama or not, this film is an excellent documentary following a successful campaign. Axelrod and Gibbs played a crucial role in Obama's election, and this film highlights the brilliant ideas they came up with along the way. The movie doesn't play favorites, and doesn't appear biased against McCain and towards Obama, it is simply a film showing how hard it is and the path this President took to achieve his goals and aspirations. I would recommend this film for anyone interested in the behind the scenes work behind Obama's campaign. As far as history goes, Obama's election is a milestone, whether you like it or not. That being said, his steps to the highest office are wonderfully culminated in this documentary.

The HBO documentary was broadcast here one day after its US premiere and one year after Election Day which brought Obama to the White House. There was certainly inspiration and and an amount of risk taken by HBO to put a whole team to follow Obama's campaign starting with 2006, as his election was not really in the cards from the start. This is maybe one of the reasons for which I expected more from this documentary than I really received.We do see the team since it's start, and actually we see more of the team then of Obama himself. We are introduced to some of the key participants in the campaign, all true believers, all deeply involved not only at the political and professional but also at the personal level. We see the crowds gathering, especially on the Democratic side, and on Obama's side within the Democratic Party - and the film does not try to keep any balance on reporting and does not show too many articulated opinions of the other camps. The arguments are most of the time emotional rather than rational, rhetoric rather than analytical. It's the story of the campaign, well told and well filmed, in chronological order - it happens under our eyes, and it is assumed that we know why it happened. Maybe in the future the documentary value of this story telling will increase, right now it's too new for us to have forgotten it already. There are no big surprises, no real scoops for people trying to learn more about the secret of Obama's victory. I expected some more information about the well conducted campaign on the Internet, or about the efficient money raising which was a key part in the success - there is no mention about this. There is also almost no mention about the international dimension of the campaign, or how the big policies issues were answered by Obama and what differentiated it relative to the other candidates on the Democratic and Republican side, leading eventually to victory. The film addresses more the emotional side, whoever looks for extended information or deep analysis will not find it here. The best moments are those in which we get a glimpse of the human dimension of the Obama family, or of the people who were involved in the campaign. For some viewers this may be enough, for other not. Depending upon the expectations 'By the People' can be satisfying or disappointing to the same extent.

I saw a limited preview screening of this in New York City at the Landmark Sunshine Theater on August 8, 2009. This doc will air on HBO in November.And it was absolutely killer. HBO Documentaries does it again. They're a brand I can shop by: Taxi to the Dark Side, The Agronomist, Born Into Brothels, etc. All great documentaries."By the People" is no exception. It's an intimate look into Barack Obama's brain trust and his key organizing generals on the ground. It captures intense, emotional, historical moments with strange moods outside fluorescent-lit hallways inside rooms you'd give your left arm to be a fly on the wall in. Then, of course, the camera goes into those rooms. But it only gives you a taste.In that sense, it leaves you wanting more. One can only imagine the amount of great footage they had leave on the cutting room floor. Hopefully, after this doc airs and the DVD is released, we'll get to see some of those deleted scenes.In the movie, here are some things you get to see you never would otherwise: Robert Gibbs' adorable little son, David Alexrod yo-yo'ing from an Obama-like calm to very Jew-neurotic about exit polls and Obama shedding a tear or two during a speech the day his grandmother dies and one day before his eventual election. Very touching. You also get to hear his grandmother (audio only) talk about Obama as a boy (a first ever, or at least for me) over shots of some rarely-before-seen family pictures.You get a wonderful, natural insight into how Obama's wife and kids act together as a family. How well-spoken and adult-sounding Malia, about 9 or 10 at the time, is. The distant look in her eyes when she says she wishes she could see her dad more during the campaign. You get to see how truly fierce in will and personality Michelle is. How much charismatic, black Chicago machismo swagger Obama gains when he's off-stage.If this all seems a little too intimate and personal, you may be right. But so instrumental to Obama's likability and popularity as a candidate at the time was his narrative and his character. A campaign as modern and media-savvy as this one doesn't just let this one slip by them, uncomfortably. They wanted this. Or at very least they allowed it.It will inevitably be compared to "The War Room," an ultimately surface-skimming and unsatisfying exposee into how Bill Clinton won the 1992 election, directed by D.A. Pennebaker, a documentarian of legend. But where "The War Room" was sensationalist, "By the People" is tense and emotional. And also matter of fact. It creates a mostly chronological and fairly complete time line of Obama's experience from the 2006 take back of the House by the Democrats to election night, about two years altogether.The instances of the familiarity this bred between the filmmakers and the campaign staff is best demonstrated when, near the end of the campaign, Obama smiles broadly and waves to the camera like he's actually glad to see them. Like he's relieved, almost.In one telling moment, he seems mildly surprised the documentary's camera crew made it to the New Hampshire primary after his victorious Iowa caucus, since the media blitz around his campaign grew exponentially.Obama says something like "You guys stuck around," smiling a politician's smile. And his communications director Robert Gibbs says, "That's because their movie's about to get better." He had no idea.