Confirmation

In one of the well-chose news excerpts from the time, NBC's Tom Brokaw laments: "No one likes what's going on, and there's no real winners. We have gone from shock to discomfort, now to a combination of anger, depression and shame." All of these emotions are palpable in the riveting docudrama. [4-17 Apr 2016, p.20]

Confirmation is a restrained and tasteful retelling. Maybe a little too much so. ... But what keeps Confirmation watchable are vivid performances by a terrific cast.

The only part of the otherwise sophisticated Confirmation that rings false is its closing chyron, which indicates that Hill's case emboldened victims of harassment to speak out and factored into 1992's congressional "year of the woman," in which female candidates won more seats than ever before.

Confirmation is an effective movie, although certainly not a great one, in terms of reconstructing how Hill was first persuaded to come forward and then left distraught, defeated and convinced it was “a mistake.” Washington and Pierce are both strong in these pivotal roles.

Judged on its own, Confirmation is solidly in the middle range of meat-and-potatoes HBO historical movies. There’s nothing wrong with it, nor will it do much to surprise you. It tells a sober, linear story and doesn’t develop its characters beyond headline-news figures.

Dutiful, respectful, evenhanded, and full of old network TV news clips that attest to the great drama of the moment, Confirmation can also be about as adventurous as a televised hearing on C-SPAN.

Despite its tantalizing subject matter, Confirmation is surprisingly flat and uninspired, in every way that it shouldn’t be in 2016.