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‘Becoming’ Director Nadia Hallgren Brings Michelle Obama’s Magic to the Screen
The former first lady’s surprise Netflix documentary is a treat
Just when you thought it was impossible to love and admire Michelle Obama more, along comes Becoming, the companion Netflix documentary to Obama’s bestselling 2018 memoir. Though filmed during her mammoth, arena-filling Beyoncé-esque 30-plus-city book tour, Becoming doesn’t kick off with a bang. Instead, it opts for a calm-before-the-storm approach. We greet Michelle — Mrs. Obama, if you’re a foe — walking out of her home, filmed from the back, toward a very official-looking black SUV.
From the back seat, she cues her phone to Kirk Franklin’s thumping “A God Like You,” teasing “do y’all want that bounce” repeatedly. A montage follows. It is composed largely of that historic day in January 2009 when Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, a Black woman with a working-class South Side of Chicago background, officially becomes our forever FLOTUS, the first lady of the United States.
Becoming, produced by the Obamas themselves through their Higher Ground Productions, isn’t just a documentary about the lawyer, wife, mother, and writer’s well-earned fairy-tale life. It’s more powerfully a reflection of from whence she’s come, where she’s been, where she still has to go…
