March 14: The Ides of March (2011 -- George Clooney)

★★★

I kept thinking of Sidney Lumet while I was watching The Ides of March.  I think the combination of political commitment, institutional corruption, firm handling of film mechanics and a willingness to look at a character or situation hard to see a taint, all these conjure Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network and, more recently, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.  But Ides of March isn’t in a league with these films; their echoes only sound here.

This film’s visual language is standard issue.  There are a lot of capable images and some capable camera movement with nothing bravura or new, which is fine for a film that looks more at content and character than at story-telling itself.  Clooney is very capable indeed at this.

But such a movie needs strong acting and a strong story if it’s to be a message film, and I didn’t find either here.  I continue to be unimpressed with Ryan Gosling performances, and his portrayal of the campaign aide is the weak link at the center of the film.  For Ides of March to work, we need to identify with that character, feel his commitment to an ideal at the beginning and sense his slide into disillusionment until we understand the shell he becomes at the end.  But Gosling isn’t able to connect with us or take us on that trip.  Instead, his character’s arc feel s like a series of stages with time connections but without emotional links: Now-I’m-Idealistic, Now-I’m-Frustrated, Now-I’m-Cynical.  It feels like Gosling is striking a series of poses as Ides of March proceeds rather than showing us the glide path as Stephen develops from optimist to cynic.   I don’t know enough about film-making to be able to say whether that’s a failing of Clooney as director or Gosling as actor, but given what Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti are able to do with their much smaller roles, I think Gosling has to bear a lot of the responsibility.

This story, too, has so much contrivance that you’re eventually taken out of the film and you lose interest in its concerns.  And it’s not only melodramatic moments like the one when we discover Molly has had a thing with the Governor; the script has to add abortion to the mix.  And even that has to be one-upped by the suicide.  Midway though, Stephen asks Ida for help, saying they’re friends, only to be rebuffed; by the end, Ida needs him and uses the same line.  These types of contrivance don’t make this film engaging or effective but take us out of it and diminish our interest.

Despite all these reservations, I find Ides of March sincere, and I like work that at least tries to get at current issues through art.  The movie is the personal voyage of a character whose idealism is ruined, but it's also a politically-committed film, and I’m glad to see someone looking at this important aspect of our political system dramatically.  I wish Sidney Lumet were still with us to be able to handle the issue with more aplomb, but at least someone is trying.