The odd thing about The Ides Of March is that, in a way, it ends halfway through. It is about the blooding of a young deputy campaign manager and his rather brutal initiation into some of the darker arts of running a presidential campaign (in this case the campaign of a state governor who wants the Democratic nomination). That campaign manager, Ryan Gosling, who does not seem especially naive when it all gets going, is transformed before our eyes from a reasonably idealistic man into all that he would previously have despised: we meet him when he insists that he is working for the governor (George Clooney, who also directed and co-wrote the film) because his boss wants to do all the right things - save the planet, stop going to war, that kind of thing. But by the end of the film (which can only have been a week later in the film's time) he has resorted to blackmailing the governor not only into sacking his top campaign manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and appointing him instead, but in accepting the endorsement and votes of a state senator the Clooney character despises, who will play ball and help the governor get electedn on the promise that he will be made the new Secretary of State. And that, really, is it.
I'd like to think that the 'message' of Clooney's new film is not 'my, my, but isn't politics dirty'. But then if that isn't the message what is? Is gorgeous George really trying to tell us to 'watch out - water's wet!' And that is a slight problem with The Ides Of March. A more complete film would have used what we are given more or less as a prologue to the full story. Taking the Shakespearean allusion just a stage further, if the full story is the tragedy of Stephen Myers (Gosling's character), Clooney's film gives us only the first two acts. What happens next? That is what I want to know.
I have no trouble at all in accepting that a previously idealistic man can have the stuffing knocked out of him and be transformed into the kind of cynical bastard his boss and his boss's rival are. But that transformation does happen almost in the twinkle of an eye, and we are given no reference points in the Gosling character which would indicate that it has all been brewing up for some time. In fact, the film goes out of its way to show him as decent and upright. I have no way of knowing personally, but if the kind of down and dirty muck-raking and wheeler-dealing shown in is not par for the course in politics, I'll eat my hat. And it would be pretty naive to expect the viewer to accept that it is all a bit exceptional but that otherwise our politicians are good men and women and true.
Apart from that flaw, this is an engrossing and entertaining film with some great performances. Unfortunately, the flaw does loom rather large in my reactions.
I'd like to think that the 'message' of Clooney's new film is not 'my, my, but isn't politics dirty'. But then if that isn't the message what is? Is gorgeous George really trying to tell us to 'watch out - water's wet!' And that is a slight problem with The Ides Of March. A more complete film would have used what we are given more or less as a prologue to the full story. Taking the Shakespearean allusion just a stage further, if the full story is the tragedy of Stephen Myers (Gosling's character), Clooney's film gives us only the first two acts. What happens next? That is what I want to know.
I have no trouble at all in accepting that a previously idealistic man can have the stuffing knocked out of him and be transformed into the kind of cynical bastard his boss and his boss's rival are. But that transformation does happen almost in the twinkle of an eye, and we are given no reference points in the Gosling character which would indicate that it has all been brewing up for some time. In fact, the film goes out of its way to show him as decent and upright. I have no way of knowing personally, but if the kind of down and dirty muck-raking and wheeler-dealing shown in is not par for the course in politics, I'll eat my hat. And it would be pretty naive to expect the viewer to accept that it is all a bit exceptional but that otherwise our politicians are good men and women and true.
Apart from that flaw, this is an engrossing and entertaining film with some great performances. Unfortunately, the flaw does loom rather large in my reactions.