Plot: Following an early and promising political career, Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sir Kenneth Branagh) is stricken with polio in 1921 at thirty-nine years of age. This movie follows his struggle with his paralysis, the refuge he took in an obscure and rundown Warm Springs, Georgia health spa, and the family pressure to return to public life and politics. Perhaps the most significant battle he fought with the stigma of paralysis was not in the eyes of others, but in his own mind.
Alternative Plot: After polio threatens his political career in the early 1920s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Kenneth Branagh) desperately searches for a cure to his newly acquired disease, hoping to regain the use of his legs. He learns of a promising spa in Warm Springs, Ga., and travels there, only to find it dilapidated. Determined to overcome polio, Roosevelt invests in the spa's revitalization and sets about recovering, aided by the support of his wife (Cynthia Nixon) and physical therapist (Kathy Bates).
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