George Clooney's "Ides of March' (1st review)

As its pompous title suggests, The Ides of March purports to be a Very Serious Film. Its subject is the presidential election campaign of a liberal governor of Pennsylvania played by George Clooney, who also co-wrote the screenplay and directed. Here are three suggestions for Clooney or anyone else aspiring to make an intelligent film about contemporary politics:

1. Try to understand how American politics actually works.

The Ides of March was written by people who don't know much about American politics. The film's opening lines come from one of Governor Mike Morris's speeches aimed at an Ohio crowd, not yet sold on his candidacy: "I'm not a Christian," he tells them, explaining that his religion "is called the Constitution of the United States of America."

Ha.

That line alone would destroy his candidacy. The U.S. has never had a president who wasn't some form of Christian. We've never come close to having a Jewish president. To think we could, in the near future, have an openly atheist commander-in-chief is laughable. Apparently the screenwriters didn't notice how important religion is to most Americans.

That the immaculately progressive Mike Morris (played by Clooney) is a viable candidate for president is just as silly as the idea that he could be governor of Pennsylvania, a state not known for its leftist leanings. Morris opposes any use of America's military abroad, wants to tax the rich, wholeheartedly supports same-sex marriage and abortion, opposes the death penalty and wants to wean the country off oil and coal and on to clean energy within ten years.

Don't get me wrong— I strongly support all these positions. But unlike Clooney and his creative team, I also realize that my viewpoint is in the distinct minority— and even if it wasn't, that powerful interest groups that would likely prevent any of these issues from succeeding.

Where's Congress?

The Ides of March also succumbs to the Green Lantern Theory of Domestic Politics: the idea that the president can simply will legislation into law by virtue of being really sure of himself.

Early in the film, Stephen Myers, a young and inexplicably innocent communications director played by Ryan Gosling says: "I've worked on more campaigns than most people have by the time they are 40; [Morris is] the only one who is actually going to make a difference in people's lives."

You'd think a man who has worked on that many political campaigns would know a president can't accomplish much of anything on the home front without sizeable Congressional majorities. But Congress is barely mentioned in The Ides of March. The film provides no hint as to which party holds power in the Senate or House, the size of the majorities in either house, or whether either chamber will remain in, or revert to, Democratic control. In real life, as we've learned over the last three years, a president's scope of action is severely limited by the political makeup of Congress.

Power corrupts?

2. Observing that politics is a corrupt game isn't insightful.

"Ambition Seduces. Power Corrupts." announces one publicity poster for The Ides of March. Thanks for the tip, but I've already read All the King's Men.

The Ides of March contends that no matter how noble politicians or staffers sound, all they really care about is power and personal advancement. And Clooney tries to prove this thesis in as lurid a fashion as possible.

But the corrupting influence of politics isn't a particularly compelling tale. "I'll do or say anything if I believe in it, but I have to believe in the cause," Meyers says. The film would have been much more interesting had it followed up on this sentiment. Many people really do enter politics for what they see as the greater good, only to discover that they must make compromises to get actual policy results (as if no one in business or private life ever needs to make a compromise). Nevertheless, politicians do manage to create laws that improve the lives of their fellow citizens. Social Security or Civil Rights, anyone?

But The Ides of March presents compromise as a commodity that's both unavoidable and unforgivable.

Sex with interns, yet again

3. Please, can we avoid intern sex scandals as a plot catalyst?

Can we at least try to put some thought into the dirty secrets with which we burden our fictional politicians? To judge by our popular culture, you'd think sleeping with interns was the principal pastime of our national political elites. (At least the real-life Congressman Anthony Weiner's on-line transgressions were inventive.)

The very word intern has taken on sexual undertones in the national psyche. As soon as Rachel Evan Wood smiles coyly at Gosling and says, "I'm just a lowly intern," we know exactly where their relationship, and the story, is headed. If our cinematic politicians must while away the late-night hours with their nubile subordinates, could the femme fatale at least be a full-time staffer?♦


To read another review by Judy Weightman, click here.
To read a response, click here.