9/10
Physically compare experienced political operatives with
their interns. More than wrinkled faces
and less hair up top separates them. The
interns still have fresh ideals and expectations of the candidates they choose
to support; the experienced staffers know better. There was a point on a campaign in their past
where their own ideals took a left turn; a point where reality jumped up and
showed them no candidate is perfect and a time when it became less about the future
of tomorrow and more about just beating the other guy.
Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling) is at the intersection. He is the number two on Governor Mike Morris’s
(George Clooney) presidential campaign.
He not only shares the Governor’s political platform, but believes in
the man himself. It is not the hero
worship of the interns he supervises, but it is not the same almost numb
feeling the number one campaign managers sometimes show. Stephen’s boss and the Governor’s main guy is
Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman). He
is on board because he shares in the political faith, but he knows more and it
shows. His shoulders are hunched, he
smokes too much, and he believes in loyalty to the candidate even more than he
believes in his own mother.
The Governor is towards the end of a tight Democratic
primary and there is only one more candidate between him and the general election,
one which will most likely favor the Democrat in the race. The campaign has stopped for the week in Ohio
which is fast becoming a make or break primary state. Stephen and Paul are expertly drafting
speeches, maneuvering the candidate where he needs to be, and cozying up to the
New York Times political reporter Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) for some
favorable coverage. The other candidate
is also in town though and he has his own political attack dog in Tom Duffy
(Paul Giamatti). Tom knows the real deal
just as much as Paul and sees in Stephen what they all used to be, smart and
talented, yet still a bit wide-eyed.
Speeches are made, debates are contested, and each side is
courting various political kingmakers.
Every time it comes down to Stephen to make a decision, it becomes more
and more a matter of what is right or what will get my candidate elected. What if you do the right thing but it causes
your candidate to fall in the polls?
What if you compromise your values and it gives your team the boost it
needs to clear that last hurdle? Stephen
has some tough choices to make and what The Ides of March really comes down to
is will Stephen the individual still be the same somewhat fresh idealist he was
at the beginning of the week?
The Ides of March has a serious and tight screenplay and it
matched those characters from the page with tried and true heavy hitters. Ryan Gosling is fast becoming one of
Hollywood’s premier true actors but even he loses the screen to the fascinating
performances of Hoffman, Giamatti, and Tomei.
These guys must tire of waiting around for that perfect script to come
along because when it does, they are usually first in line to give it what they’ve
got, and in The Ides of March, these three knock it out of the park. Gosling and Clooney are no slouches and must
carry a lot of the film, but their roles are not as juicy as the supporting
cast. Evan Rachel Wood also shines as a
campaign intern.
The Ides of March opened this year’s Venice Film Festival
and won its Brian Prize, the first American film to do so. The Brian Prize champions the values of
rationality, human rights, expression, etc… and it must have been an easy
choice. Scripts like this one do not
come around once a week. True actors
such as Hoffman, Giamatti, and Tomei rarely latch on to roles in the same film
where they each have in-depth, staggering monologues. When one of them gets going, they could go on
the same spiel for minutes on end with hardly an interruption. The choices people make really can change
them as an individual. Do you choose the
right thing every time or is the end all that matters no matter what the
means?
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