The Ides of March

This movie is based on the play Farragut North, and the screenplay is credited to the original writer and George Clooney. After seeing the movie, I can only guess that the play was probably much better without Clooney’s “improvements”.

Clooney has a record of making films that bang the drum for his personal views. I believe this is one of those films. This is mostly because there are speeches and scenes that feel “dropped in”, that don’t seem to flow well with the plot, and which beat the drum very strongly for a particular political slant.

But the movie has much to recommend it. Ryan Gosling plays Stephen Meyers, the junior campaign manager for George Clooney’s Mike Morris. They are battling with Senator Ted Pullman (Michael Mantell), though more precisely with his Campaign Manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti). The goal is to win the critical Ohio primary, to be held on March 15th. Which are the Ides of March of the title. Any allusion to the day Julius Caesar was killed was lost on me; I saw nothing in the plot that was analogous to Caesar’s death.

As the battle for Ohio heats up, we are treated to a remarkably detailed and complex view of the insides of a campaign (likely due to the original author – Beau Willimon – and his experience working on the Howard Dean campaign). The Campaign Managers are waging a war of information, from old quotes to damage the opposition, to using the press to maneuver their opposite numbers into specific actions, to trying to find out which candidate will earn the endorsement of a key Democratic figure. This endorsement is said to virtually guarantee the nomination.

With this carrot dangling in front of them, the story poses the question, “What will you give for a win in Ohio?” The endorsing Senator poses that question quite bluntly; make him Secretary of State and he’ll endorse whoever you say. For the other characters, each has something specific they want, and something they can give up to get it: we watch as each decides if it’s worth the cost.

The bulk of this introspection is carried by Gosling’s Stephen Meyers. At the beginning of the film, he is an idealist who believes a Morris victory will usher in a new era of greatness in America. By the end, we see a shell of a man who no longer seems to know right from wrong, only win from lose. This is very much a train-wreck movie, and Gosling does a fantastic job of making you believe this journey is hard for him to make.

A great cast, with Paul Giamatti and Marissa Tomei under-used. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the Morris Campaign Manager, and does a great job. He manages to portray a veteran who, while capable of working with the comprimises and dirty tricks the job requires, has not sold his soul and still values integrity above all. Paul Giamatti plays a similar character, but one who doesn’t so much value integrity as finding it a weakness to be exploited. For him, it’s all just a game to be played for keeps.

Various moral dilemas are posed, including a choice made by campaign intern Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood) to have an abortion. The movie is chock-full of these sorts of complexities and surprises, making “verisimilitude” the apt word to describe what we see. It’s not a documentary; it’s more true than that.

But I have to bring up the Clooney bits. He not only co-wrote, he directed and acted as well. At points throughout the story, everything comes to a halt while we listen to a speech by Clooney about all that’s wrong in America. “Don’t like terrorism”, he says, “then don’t by their product and they go away.” How does one do that? George has the answer: “Stop driving cars that run on oil.” Apparently the plan is to simply make all automobiles into electric cars (and trucks I assume, though he doesn’t include them). Do that, and Al-Qaida goes away. Yeah, right.

And it’s that sort of lunacy that, besides being laughable, intrudes Clooney into the movie instead of Mike Morris. These moments break the narrative flow, add nothing to the plot, and are so transparently pedagogical that they pull the paying customers out of the movie world. So when Ryan Gosling appears again, he seems less real and his decline and fall are not as dramatic or compelling.

It is ironic that a film about betraying others to further a personal goal should be marred by Clooney betraying the original writer to further his personal political views.

It’s a good movie, if you can ignore George. But ultimately I had to mark it down for poor judgement.

My rating: 2 stars out of 4