Ides of March (USA, 2011, George Clooney)
Ben Livant:
The West Wing for boys instead of girls. The erotic soap-opera romantics have been replaced by language-as-a-weapon hard-ball sports. Ostensibly a no-nonsense examination of politics as a profession in a supposedly democratic system, The Ides of March is at the core yet another bleeding-heart morality tale. The topic is the loss of innocence and the entrenchment of cynicism due to deal-making and back-stabbing on the campaign trail.
Gone is the optimism of Frank Capra 70 years ago. The ending of The Ides of March is hardly happy. Our initially virtuous hero turns out to be an anti-hero, a Machiavellian operator par excellence. The film is not at all complacent about this. We are plainly meant to find it tragic that mastering the political machine necessarily entails losing your soul. Boo-hoo. What remains is Capraesque liberalism about what the individual is supposed to be able to become in American society if not for the moral decay that attends unchecked and imbalanced power. Specifically in this story, the drive to gain it.
Oh, the sorrowful saga of what it takes to be endorsed by your delegates to run for the highest office in the land. The terrible compromises, the undermining of integrity, the corruption of the individual himself and therefore the system. Will it ever be possible again for a Mr. Deeds to go to Washington and save the republic? Is there not one person who will stand up to Mephistopheles? Shucks, if not the guy seeking the nomination, his campaign manager, his right-hand man; you know, to keep the man-who-would-be-king honest to himself, true to the people and good for the country?
The Ides of March boils down to a big breast-beating session within the Democratic caucus. The brow-furrowing is all about the ravages of in-fighting, the party's self-defeating inability to rehabilitate itself as the proper master of the nation, the current Democratic presidency notwithstanding. Besides, the movie is based on a play about the candidacy race of Howard Dean back in 2004. More historical inspiration, the plot requires no small reliance on a tendency Bill Clinton notoriously added to his public portrait. So much for not making dramatic use of personal sexuality in the manner of The West Wing. Too bad the status of women in the film is just as unacceptably invisible and inferior as it is in The Social Network, another infatuation with masculine rivalry that doesn't even begin to address how and for whom the system is rigged in the first place.
The cast is packed with talent and the performances are very good. There is no gratuitious action and the dialogue is crisp. As I've already alluded, there is a certain melodramatic strain informing the plot, but for the most part it is a lean chess-game that keeps us guessing about the next move. All in all, an intelligent thiller with its partisan sentiments on full display. As I am not a huge fan of the genre and definitely not a member of the party, The Ides of March was for me, a boy, only marginally more profound than The West Wing.
The trailer
Ben Livant:
The West Wing for boys instead of girls. The erotic soap-opera romantics have been replaced by language-as-a-weapon hard-ball sports. Ostensibly a no-nonsense examination of politics as a profession in a supposedly democratic system, The Ides of March is at the core yet another bleeding-heart morality tale. The topic is the loss of innocence and the entrenchment of cynicism due to deal-making and back-stabbing on the campaign trail.Gone is the optimism of Frank Capra 70 years ago. The ending of The Ides of March is hardly happy. Our initially virtuous hero turns out to be an anti-hero, a Machiavellian operator par excellence. The film is not at all complacent about this. We are plainly meant to find it tragic that mastering the political machine necessarily entails losing your soul. Boo-hoo. What remains is Capraesque liberalism about what the individual is supposed to be able to become in American society if not for the moral decay that attends unchecked and imbalanced power. Specifically in this story, the drive to gain it.
Oh, the sorrowful saga of what it takes to be endorsed by your delegates to run for the highest office in the land. The terrible compromises, the undermining of integrity, the corruption of the individual himself and therefore the system. Will it ever be possible again for a Mr. Deeds to go to Washington and save the republic? Is there not one person who will stand up to Mephistopheles? Shucks, if not the guy seeking the nomination, his campaign manager, his right-hand man; you know, to keep the man-who-would-be-king honest to himself, true to the people and good for the country?The Ides of March boils down to a big breast-beating session within the Democratic caucus. The brow-furrowing is all about the ravages of in-fighting, the party's self-defeating inability to rehabilitate itself as the proper master of the nation, the current Democratic presidency notwithstanding. Besides, the movie is based on a play about the candidacy race of Howard Dean back in 2004. More historical inspiration, the plot requires no small reliance on a tendency Bill Clinton notoriously added to his public portrait. So much for not making dramatic use of personal sexuality in the manner of The West Wing. Too bad the status of women in the film is just as unacceptably invisible and inferior as it is in The Social Network, another infatuation with masculine rivalry that doesn't even begin to address how and for whom the system is rigged in the first place.
The cast is packed with talent and the performances are very good. There is no gratuitious action and the dialogue is crisp. As I've already alluded, there is a certain melodramatic strain informing the plot, but for the most part it is a lean chess-game that keeps us guessing about the next move. All in all, an intelligent thiller with its partisan sentiments on full display. As I am not a huge fan of the genre and definitely not a member of the party, The Ides of March was for me, a boy, only marginally more profound than The West Wing.
The trailer
1 comment:
Could not have summed it up better if I was ... umm , a film critic. Great review. An altogether horrible , intelligence insulting and most disappointingly , biased rant. Having said that , in the main , the performances were supurb ; Seymour Hoffman particularly.
Post a Comment