Review: In 'The Way I See It,' a photographer recalls his years in the White House, and the 'shade' he's throwing at its current occupant

It’s not often a political documentary is designed to make the viewer smile — righteous calls to action are the norm — but Dawn Porter’s “The Way I See It” elicits grins and laughs, because of the good-natured, happy fella that she profiles.

That person is Pete Souza, who retired on Jan. 20, 2017, from what he says is the greatest job in the world: Chief official photographer for the White House. It’s a job he held twice, first for two years in the late ‘80s, documenting the final years of Ronald Reagan’s second term, and again, starting in 2009, for the entire eight-year run of Barack Obama.

Before and in between those stints, Souza was a photojournalist, mostly for the Chicago Tribune. It was as the Tribune’s Washington photographer that he started an assignment to follow Obama, Illinois’ new junior senator, in his first term. Souza also followed Obama on his presidential campaign, and accepted the White House job after the election.

Souza’s one stipulation to Robert Gibbs, head of Obama’s communications department, was that he get full access, to photograph the private moments as well as the public ones. Obama agreed.

That’s a far different set-up than whoever has the job now, Souza notes in the documentary. He looks at a photo of Donald Trump in the Situation Room in 2019, after some Al Qaeda bigwig was killed, and can see how staged and phony the photo is. For starters, the photographer would have had to have been blocking whatever Trump and his generals were watching.

In his semi-retirement, Souza has become an expert on Trump’s manipulation of images and his administration’s use of the icons and dignity of the White House itself. Souza started reacting to Trump’s daily nonsense by posting photos from the Obama years on his Instagram, with short, snarky comments that conveyed an overall message of “this is how a president is supposed to do things.” Many of the posts were compiled into a book, appropriately called “Shade.”

Porter, through the course of “The Way I See It,” serves two missions. The first is, through Souza’s images, to chronicle the breadth of the Obama administration, and the pay tribute to the reverence that Obama showed to the presidency and the White House during his eight years there. The other is to let Souza point out, from his unique vantage point, how thoroughly Trump has disrespected the office and the building in just four years. (One wishes for an addendum, to ask Souza’s opinion of how Melania Trump redesigned the Rose Garden — where Souza and his wife, Patti, got married, with Obama officiating.)

Though there’s a sense of urgency to “The Way I See It” — Souza says he would be delighted not to contrast Trump’s White House to Obama’s, and hopes Jan. 20, 2021, will be the date he can stop — the overwhelming emotion the movie generates is of nostalgia. Yes, there was a time when the American president wasn’t a raging jerk to vast swaths of the country he was elected to serve. Those were the days.

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‘The Way I See It’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, September 18, in theaters where available. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 100 minutes.