The 'Ides of March' Misses the Mark

One of the things that most interested me about the previews and articles on George Clooney's latest (and very politically-themed and high-quality) directorial effort, The Ides of March, was that Clooney acquired the rights to the source material in late 2008, but held off on it for well over a year, because he felt it was too "cynical" and "mean-spirited" to be produced right after Obama took office. Fair enough, from his point of view, but I was a little shocked that many of my fellow critics and authors seemed to echo these thoughts.

"Cynical" and "mean spirited" compared to what, I wonder? Bert and Ernie Sing Along? How infantile our political dialog must be that a movie which shows politicians to be ruthless and manipulative, instead of just canvases for idealist wish-fulfillment (of left or right), should still be considered "shocking".

One rather doubts that a facing-foreclosure small businessman, an outsourced office or factory worker, or a struggling single mother trying to get by today, would get "the vapors" at anything dramatized in this film. Besides the forced media hype, these pronouncements say more about the people saying them than they do about the film itself. And now, of course, after three years of Tea Parties, "blood libels", and 1960s-level division, it's the movie's very miasma of disillusionment that is its cultural calling card.

Based on Beau Willimon's play Farragut North (Willimon adapted his own material along with Clooney and his longtime writing/producing partner Grant Heslov), The Ides of March tells the story of the final days of a hotly-contested Democratic primary (shades of Obama vs. Hillary) in the 'swing states' of Ohio and North Carolina. Yet the central character isn't either of the dueling candidates, but the young and nervy press director for one of them, Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling, fresh from his star turn in Drive and just as slow-burn intense here). The movie opens by having a lot of fun with Gosling running his own showoff lines, literally standing in his candidate's place as he preps camera angles and sound checks for a coming debate.

This is meant to be satiric, but the opening joke is on the movie itself. In today's political world, the problem isn't that politicians are being fed one-liners and talking points by their Stephanopoulous-type, media-savvy handlers; it's that they aren't -- or that they ignore and overrule them and go off the leash. Would any sane spin doctor have fed Sharron Angle her lines about "looking like Asians to me", or Christine O'Donnell's witchery -- let alone Palin or Bachmann's soundbytes on the debt ceiling or Second Amendment solutions? The last few years have proven that perhaps the only thing worse than all the robotic wind-up politicians are all the ones proud of "going rogue."

Gosling's employer is Gov. Mike Morris (Clooney), easily the most liberal politician to front a film since Robert Redford's McGovern-era satire The Candidate, or at least Warren Beatty's 1996 campaign in Bulworth. (In a blatant reference to Obama, and considering what comes later, liberal disillusionment with Obama, Clooney's campaign office is covered with Obama-style campaign posters with hot-button one-liners like "BELIEVE".)

Openly pro-gay-marriage, NARAL-level pro-choice, in favor of nationalized health insurance, stiff CAFE standards and an eventual ban on combustion engines, and reinstating a peacetime draft for "volunteer" service and free college, he's the kind of person who, as that great film critic Dick Cheney would say, would have conservative "heads exploding."

And both friend and foe know it. Clooney's opponent for the nomination is a drawling, red state, Blue Dog Democrat who likes nothing more than speaking in code to religious and socially conservative voters, his favorite dog whistle being that the outspoken lefty Morris isn't "Christian" enough to serve as President (much less to beat an incumbent Republican, clearly implied to be Bush or Bush-like.)

You just know Clooney's foe is the kind of Democrat who voted to filibuster the public option, or whose perfectly-coiffed political wife would crusade against too-sexy-and-violent video games and rap CDs. And he's openly courting the support of Republicans to beat Clooney in an open primary.

The decision maker is a faintly demagogic African-American senator shopping for career advancement, whom Clooney's character neither respects nor likes, but whom his opponent has already promised a cabinet position. He makes it clear that either Clooney offers him the co-pilot's seat on his ticket, or all of his clout (and pledged super-delegates) will go right to Clooney's opponent.

However, there are two much bigger flies in the ointment. A ruthless New York Times reporter, played to perfection by Marisa Tomei, is covering the beat, and has a love-hate, big-sisterly relationship with Gosling. Tomei is the grownup in the room, and rightly realizes that there's no moral difference between a Republican or right-wing Democrat exploiting the fears and superstitions of their base, and a liberal enabling his supporters to indulge in magical-thinking "hope" and completely unrealistic expectations.

Which is to say, she's the villian of the movie and personification of "the system", along with Clooney's "Christian" opponent for the nomination. "You've really drunk the Kool-Aid," she marvels. "You really buy into all this crap about 'taking back the country?' For the average schmo, it's not going to make any difference who wins." Gosling defends his candidate's honor like a man defending his wife or girlfriend. "If Mike wins, it says more about our country than it does about him," he intones. "He HAS to win!"

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti round things out as Clooney and his archenemy's campaign directors, both playing off of each other perfectly as schlumpfy, unglamorous, bottom-line bookends in contrast to young, sweaty, pheremonal Gosling. Hoffman has him, but Giamatti wants him.

Yet even as Hoffman and Giamatti fight over Gosling like dueling abusive boyfriends, a real "love triangle" opens up, involving Evan Rachel Wood, luminous and superbly nuanced as the pretty and seemingly-sophisticated daughter of the DNC chairman (Gregory Itzin in a nice bit of casting, memorable as a corrupt ex-President on 24). Of course, one aspect of the triangle is Gosling, and the other is the most obvious suspect -- which is about as much of a spoiler in the way Ides tells its story as saying that on this week's CSI, there's a murder that Nick, Sara, and Greg try to solve using forensic evidence.

Indeed, Ides' narrative spine is essentially that of a "moral procedural", and the basic events of the story and plot couldn't be more obvious and predictable. Where Ides soars is in playing out its domino theory of destruction, as each player double-crosses and triple-crosses the other in an ever-escalating aftermath, where positions in the power hierarchy change like musical chairs.

Thankfully, the movie portrays the girl as the real victim of what happens and the politicians as collateral damage, instead of the other way around. When things go to hell in a handbasket, she's the only truly sympathetic character left. But the real villain is shown to be The System, a scandal-mongering media machine that makes such a big deal about "the politics of personal destruction".

And despite all the ruined lives, things end pretty much right back where they started. Clooney is still the tarnished 'good guy', and his Blue Dog opponent remains the one-dimensional, cipher villain, seemingly vanquished by Gosling's cunning and willingness to be ruthless in the cause of good (and his own career, natch). As Karina Longworth noted in her excellent LA Weekly preview of the film, this is both the movie's artistic achievement and its most artful dodge: "A truly devastating indictment of contemporary politics would show what happens when the “Believe” candidate gets elected -- and then actually tries to do the job."

The Ides of March is perhaps the best fictional exploration of an American political campaign's behind-the-scenes since The West Wing went off the air. But there's one big difference. The West Wing dramatized a Clinton-like White House largely without Clinton's thorny personal issues. The Ides of March doesn't just show those hidden flaws; in the end, it positively celebrates them.