If all politics is hardball, the brand of presidential politics depicted in George Clooney’s Ides of March is a Tony Conigliaro bean-ball.
At issue: a Democratic primary campaign driven by the sole and sullying motivation to win. The only tools of the trade needed are the ability to out-trick and out-manipulate not only the opposition but your friends. Or as ida Horowitz (Marisa Tomei), a New York Times reporter puts it to her source, Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), friendships in politics are overwhelmed by the necessity of co-existing for mutual gain. Tie your emotions too close to even a figure as seemingly benign as Gosling’s boss, super-candidate Mike Morris (Clooney), and you’ll eventually be disappointed.
The acting in Ides of March is nothing short of perfection. Gosling, the premier actor in films his last four movies, plays a second-in-command campaign advisor to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Paul, a savvy, jaded veteran of the election wars. Clooney’s more conservative opponent’s lead spin-doctor is Duffy (Paul Giamatti), whose ruthlessness makes Karl Rove look like Jimmy Carter….As the key primary in Ohio looms, Clooney throws in cast member Jeffrey Wright as a fellow candidate who’s dropped out and is holding enough pledged delegates to tip the scale to whichever candidate he decides to endorse. If that isn’t enough to cause ethical havoc, there’s an intern (think what you will) played by Evan Rachel Wood. It may be the most talented cast of any movie in recent memory. They blend together the crazy lasagna of a potboiler script to tell us a story of lost innocence and wily welching.
Like Moneyball, Ides of March transcends the insider niche film. While big on probing political institutions and portraying the coolness under fire of the main players, it should hold its own with even the most apolitical viewer. It is based on the play Farragut North (named after a Washington D. C. metro stop), written by Beau Willimon, who co-wrote the script here with Clooney and Grant Heslov. Willimon was a young whippersnapper aid to Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean and Chuck Schumer, so he knows the turf. Clooney directs with a knowing touch and is able to keenly fluctuate between the kinetic and the reflective.
If there’s a quibble, a couple of the plot twists seem a tad forced and irrationally coincidental. However, your post-film, “But wait–” is likely to recede as the insightful and exciting Ides of March’s aftertaste gains hold. And you may just become more curious about the sausage-making aspect of politics.
9 Unscrupulous Potboilers out of 10
