Having pummelled billions out of audiences with their Summer tentpoles, Hollywood now turns its attentions to the awards season that allows them to make money from smaller and more ‘grown up’ productions, productions known popularly as ‘Oscar Bait’.
Based on Bill Willimon’s Broadway play Farragut North, Ides of March boasts a literary pedigree, a stellar cast and a script that is decidedly a cut above your average Hollywood ‘prestige picture’. Ostensibly a political thriller, this is a film that is all about the characters and the performances.
Stephen (Gosling) is a political operative working behind the scenes of a presidential campaign. Said to possess one of the greatest “media minds” in American politics, Stephen is feared by his loyalty-obsessed boss Paul (Hoffman) and coveted by the manipulative Tom (Giamatti) who runs the opposition’s campaign. Poised on the lip of victory, Stephen’s candidate starts to look shaky as the opposition begin to undermine the youthful candidate (Clooney) by playing up the fear of the unknown. As the campaign swings between issues of loyalty to principle and fear of what might be, Stephen finds these issues affecting both his career and his private life as people work to push him out of the campaign and bury the truth regarding a candidate’s involvement in a potential political scandal.
Ides of March is very much a genre piece. Between its zinger-littered dialogue and its backdrop of shady back rooms and small-town campaign offices, the film both looks and feels like an episode of The West Wing. While the film does touch upon the differences in the candidates’ policies, the real focus here is not upon the content of the politics so much as upon the political process and the personalities that dominate it.
The thematic tug-of-war between loyalty and fear plays out on a number of levels including the relationships between Stephen and the heads of respective campaigns. The performances make this thematic balancing act genuinely beautiful to behold as Giamatti revels in cynicism and Hoffman pulsates with hypocritical self-righteous indignation. Trapped in the middle of these raging male egos is the character of Stephen who benefits hugely from Gosling’s capacity for portraying what can only be described as an intensely sympathetic and eminently engaging black slate. Indeed, as in Nicolas Winding-Refn’s Driver, Gosling’s capacity to hold our attention lies in what he does not say and does not do. Impassive to the end, Gosling’s performance hints at great bubbling reserves of emotional energy that could erupt in any number of different ways. Much of the film’s tension lies not in the details of its under-written plot (there is no real threat in the possibility of Clooney’s character losing the election) but in waiting to find out what the various characters will do.
Littered with wonderful performances, Ides of March seems genetically engineered to harvest award nominations and it will be genuinely surprising if its producers did not walk away from the 2012 awards season with a lot to smile about. However, beyond its capacity to entertain with dazzling performances and periodically sensational dialogue, Ides of March is by no means a classic.
Whether on a visual or narrative level, Clooney and co-screenwriter Grant Heslov really do not show us anything that we have not seen before. The tale of idealism crushed beneath the boots of political expediency is an old political saw and while the themes of fear and loyalty are interesting, Clooney’s direction fails to elevate them above the level of a subtle motif. Perhaps if Clooney had been less plodding in his direction and the film’s accusation had been more concrete and impassioned then Ides of March might have been a truly memorable piece of political filmmaking. Instead, Clooney’s latest is nothing more than an entertaining and competently directed romp featuring great performances from some of Hollywood’s most potent (and promising) acting talents. Some Friday nights, that is more than enough.
