Demme doc is a snapshot of Jimmy Carter

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Director Jonathan Demme cautioned Jimmy Carter that he intended to make a "warts and all" documentary about him.The 39th president of the United States found the phrase "vaguely distasteful," Demme says, but he needn't have worried. The Southern governor who answered the question "Jimmy who?" by being elected to the White House in 1976 comes across as hardworking, religious, steadfast (some might say stubborn) in his convictions, attentive to his wife and energetic for a man of 83. Or 63.Demme's documentary, "Jimmy Carter, Man From Plains" should really be called "Man From Plains ... on a Book Tour."While it touches on other aspects of Carter's life, including his late mother, who still moves him to tears, the 1978 Camp David peace accords and his work with Habitat for Humanity, it's a look at Carter through the prism of his December 2006 promotional tour for "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."He intended the title to be provocative -- and was it ever.During a speech at Brandeis University, Carter reeled off charges flung his way. For the first time, he said, he had been called a liar, bigot, anti-Semite, coward and plagiarist. "This has hurt me," he added, although he never wavers from his position.As Carter moves from city to city, usually with his publicist from Simon & Schuster in tow, he talks to interviewers in person, by phone and via satellite. He sits for chats with Terry Gross, Charlie Rose, Wolf Blitzer and far less famous faces, including the editor of the student newspaper at Emory University, who isn't afraid to ask tough questions.Carter calls the experience with one phone interviewer obnoxious, but he's generally patient. Granted, interviews are set up by his publicist, but it's impossible to control the people at public appearances, be they book signings or speeches.The camera captures protesters, but he's at a remove from them. He is being squired around in a car, sirens blaring and Carter talking, with music layered over all of that, which makes for sensory overload.I'm not sure what to make of Carter and company walking by an apparent homeless man on a sidewalk, because Demme obviously holds his subject in high regard.However, book tours, like movie publicity tours, can become repetitive; same or similar questions, different cities. The movie drops in the controversies that dogged Carter but it never fully fleshes them out.It's unfortunate that when Carter met with the executive committee of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Phoenix, the Arizonans declined to give permission for their comments to be recorded. As a result, we see Carter and the blurred-out faces in the room with him, which makes for weird, one-sided moviemaking and arguments.Carter makes no apologies for his stands in "Man From Plains" and comes across as a small-town resident not above wheeling his own suitcase through a hotel lobby or talking about his nightly ritual of reading the Bible with wife Rosalynn."Man From Plains" is just a snapshot of Carter when there's enough raw material in his life for a full album. Or two.Rating: PG for some thematic elements and brief disturbing images.(Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)