4:34 AM - Grippingly Dark and Cynical Politics Drama: The Ides of March
If there is any a film can let me sit in my couch and stare at
my PC screen for 101 minutes, it must be The Ides of March.
Directed by George Clooney, casting by George Clooney, Ryan Gosling
and Philip Seymour Hoffman, what's more do you need to expect?
The movie is a grippingly dark and cynical drama of insider
politics, set during the days leading up to an Ohio Democratic
presidential primary. Ryan Gosling, proving that he can flirt with
sleaze and still make you like him, stars as Stephen Meyers, the
idealistic but also shrewdly opportunistic press secretary to Gov.
Mike Morris (played by Clooney), a soulful and articulate
Obama-in-2008-esque candidate who is promising a new kind of
politics. Morris and his team are out to win the endorsement of a
senator (Jeffrey Wright) whose rival delegates could clinch Morris
the nomination. If you would like to enjoy this film in your
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It is adapted from Beau Willimon's play Farragut North (the
screenplay was co-written by Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Willimon),
offers a densely shuffled version of actual headline campaign news:
not just Obama but the Clinton scandals, Howard Dean, and a nod to
Mike Dukakis, all knitted together with cameos by Charlie Rose,
Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews that (for once) don't feel like
stunt reality gimmicks but are woven into the movie's texture.
The Ides of March is the fourth feature directed by George
Clooney (after Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night, and
Good Luck, and Leatherheads), and it's his best one yet. Actors who
become directors tend to focus on performance at the expense of
everything else. Clooney certainly brings out the best in his
actors, but his driving trait as a filmmaker is that he knows what
plays - he has an uncanny sense of how to uncork a scene and let it
bubble and flow.
The Ides of March serves up everything we've come to know
about the dirty business of how campaigns are really run in this
country. That may sound like boilerplate cynicism, but what's new
is that Clooney exposes how in our era the thorny process of
politics has become the content, blotting out the meaning of policy
the way an eclipse blots out the sun. The movie suggests that
that's what occurred in the Obama administration. But it also says
a spirit of venomous aggression has entered our politics, one that
(the film implies) Obama would do well to embrace more than he has.
The Ides of March isn't profound, but it sure is provocative. It's
a fable of moral urgency, a savvy lament, and a thriller of ideas
that goes like a shot.
No matter Gosling or Seymour Hoffman, they all have wonderful
performances in this film, even Gosling has a weird shape face just
like Robert Pattinson, but I still think he is a good-looking
actor. Of course, who can ignore the most big shot, the director
and protagonist - George Clooney, so much glaring stars, your
friends must like them, too (who doesn't), so you can import it to
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tags: george gosling ryan clooney movie