On the eve of the election (but it’s still a monday, where I’m supposed to talk about entertainment), it might be a great time to unwind with a movie about a political campaign. So the question persists: what’s the best one?
That’s a tough question, since the majority of political movies are about campaigns. [There’s just something very exciting about an actual race, whereas trying to get a bill passed or the process of governing is usually much less visceral.] Then you might ask “Well, then, what are some good ones?”
The Candidate, starring Robert Redford as a late seventies leftie trying to win a California senate seat (even as, you guessed it, he has to sacrifice a lot of what he really believes to get there) is a strong start. Then I’d move up to Warren Beatie’s Bulworth, featuring him as another California senate candidate, but this time one that suffers a breakdown on the campaign trail, but it’s that breakdown that allows him to finally start telling the truth (bonus points for featuring a young Halle Berry). I’d then feel like more of a dramatic movie, and watch The Ides of March (with Ryan Gosling as an ambitious campaign aid to a presidential candidate who’s not as virtuous as he appears), but that movie’s problem is that it doesn’t show you much you don’t already know. By contrast, The Campaign (the new movie with Will Ferrell as an incumbent Dixiecrat willing to do anything to beat the doofus Tea Party candidate put up by big business) is actually a deceptively insightful movie that hides some of its sharpest critiques in broad slapstick. [On television, you can’t beat the most recent season of Parks and Recreation, that featured Leslie running for a city council office opposite Paul Rudd’s fortunate son. The debate episode and the election day episode were TV perfection.]
But, for my money, this race really only boils down to two films, and one of them is the clear winner.
The Runner Up: Primary Colors. I know some don’t like this movie (that looks at a very thinly-veiled version of Bill Clinton as he runs for president) but it gets damn near everything right. The flavor, the feel, the haggardness and exhaustion of a campaign. [Let’s just say Billy Bob Thornton makes a more realistic operative than Ryan Gosling.] You feel like you’re on the road with them, and it’s as close to a documentary as you’re likely to get from a movie. Of course, there’s still a movie that trumps it, not in realism, but in message, and that movie is…
The Winner: Bob Roberts. This Tim Robbins satire starred him as a faux-folksy crypto-fascist running for the senate and it explored everything, everything wrong with the way campaigns are run. Bob the candidate is all about flash and fake-warmth and a “sincerity” so prepackaged you can feel the toxic cynicism oozing right out of it (his hopelessly unhip competitor, a bow-tied Gore Vidal, is obviously better for the job but people don’t care about that). The movie “got” the shift of the rightwing into a party of barely contained selfishness and hatred, and predicted The Tea Party tea leaves and even the rise of the Dubya/Palins years before any of it happened. See it, and see a satire so ahead of the curve, it’s practically not a comedy.