Today’s episode looked at political films with specific attention to movies about US Presidents.
Founding Fathers
John Adams is an HBO miniseries based on David McCullough’s biography. The series plays as a humanistic counterpoint to the way the Founding Fathers have been mythologized. Adams and others are portrayed as people who had doubts and flaws and made missteps which is in a way reassuring. Paul Giamatti plays the second president, Laura Linney is his wife Abigail Adams, and Tom Wilkinson is cast as Benjamin Franklin.
Jefferson in Paris is a fictionalized drama about Thomas Jefferson’s time as the United States’ ambassador to France. The film focuses on his relationships to artist Maria Cosway and slave Sally Hemings. Nick Nolte plays Jefferson, Greta Scacchi is cast as Cosway, and Thandiwe Newton plays Hemings.
The Clinton Era
Primary Colors was adapted from the book which was credited to Anonymous but was later revealed to be authored by Joe Klein. The book was officially a work of fiction but Primary Colors was widely recognized as a roman à clef about Bill Clinton and his 1992 campaign for the presidency. The film version was directed by Mike Nichols and starred John Travolta, Emma Thompson, and Kathy Bates.
The American President was directed by Rob Reiner and written by Aaron Sorkin. It’s very much a product of the Clinton era. The movie imagines a widowed President of the United States who romances a lobbyist and his political opponents use the relationship as a cudgel. The American President was a dry run for the television series The West Wing, featuring a similar tone and even some of the same cast.
Other Films: The Special Relationship, The War Room
Reagan
The 2024 biopic followed Ronald Reagan from his career as a Hollywood actor through his terms as President of the United States. Reagan has become a beloved and legendary figure in conservative politics and hagiography does not even begin to describe Reagan. This movie portrays the fortieth President of the United States as a saint who was without fault. It’s badly made, remarkably incurious about its subject, and represents the worst of kind of biographical filmmaking.
George W. Bush Era
Vice is a biography of Dick Cheney who had a long political career that culminated as Vice President under George W. Bush. Vice was directed by Adam McKay who also helmed The Big Short and Don’t Look Up. The Cheney biopic has a similar dark comic tone. The cast includes Christian Bale as Cheney, Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, and Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush.
Other Films: Recount, Fahrenheit 9/11, W., Too Big To Fail, Truth
Chappaquiddick
The 2018 movie Chappaquiddick is a dramatization of the political crisis management following the car accident involving United States Senator Ted Kennedy and campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne. The film is an extraordinary tale of political ambition colliding with personal responsibility and the ways people compromise themselves in pursuit of power. The film stars Jason Clarke as Kennedy and Kate Mara as Kopechne. The standout performances of Chappaquiddick are Ed Helms as Kennedy cousin and lawyer Joseph Gargan and Jim Gaffigan as United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Paul F. Markham.
Political Comedies
The Distinguished Gentleman stars Eddie Murphy as a conman who gets elected to congress. As he enjoys the perks of being in power, Murphy’s character also grows a conscience as he encounters corruption that even he is unable to stomach.
Bulworth is a 1998 political comedy starring and written and directed by Warren Beatty. The movie is about a United States Senator who has a nervous breakdown while on the campaign trail and starts telling everyone the truth with often cringy and hilarious results. The tone and cultural references are very rooted in the late 1990s but Bulworth has aged remarkably well.
Rumours is a 2024 comedy in which leaders of the G7 gather at a wooded retreat to work out a draft statement addressing a global crisis. Their work is interrupted by strange and supernatural phenomena. This is intended to be an absurd comedy but even absurd comedies have to make sense. Rumours is incoherent. It’s weird for its own sake and the movie isn’t very funny nor does it have anything to say about politics and government.
Other Films: Duck Soup, The Campaign, Irresistible, Wag the Dog, Election, The Oath
Donald Trump
The Apprentice dramatizes the relationship between lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan). Cohn teaches Trump lessons in politics and business. Meanwhile, Trump romances his first wife Ivanna (Maria Bakalova). In the short term, The Apprentice will probably be praised or dismissed because of the political climate in which it was released. But this film transcends that moment. It is an extraordinary character study that is extremely well made and a scathing portrait of power.
Other Films: Fahrenheit 11/9, The Comey Rule
Nixon
Richard Nixon is the President of the United States most frequently portrayed in motion pictures as seen in films as diverse as Dick, Elvis & Nixon, Black Dynamite, Frost/Nixon, and Watchmen. The two essential dramas about the Nixon era are 1976’s All the President’s Men and 1994’s Nixon. All the President’s Men is really about Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) as they uncover the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon Administration. It’s an excellent film but it was made for an audience that was familiar with the events that had occurred just a few years before the picture was made. 1994’s Nixon was directed by Oliver Stone and stars Anthony Hopkins in the lead role. This is the masterpiece of Oliver Stone’s career. The picture runs three and a half hours and it is a wide ranging but also extremely empathetic character study of the thirty-seventh president. Despite its length, Nixon plays very fast with fascinating implications about what Tricky Dick and his legacy means for us and for political power.
Dark Satire
Look Who’s Back is a German film based on a popular book that imagines Adolf Hitler has miraculously returned to present day Germany. The film is similar to Sacha Baron Cohen’s character comedies in the way it mixes scripted scenes with improv. Look Who’s Back dramatizes a critical question: would people recognize fascism if faced with it today? The answer provided by Look Who’s Back is at best ambiguous.
The Death of Stalin is a comedy co-written and directed by Armando Iannucci who is best known as the creator of the television show Veep. Based on history, The Death of Stalin dramatizes the way those in power maneuvered to gain control of the Soviet Union immediately following the passing of the dictator. The Death of Stalin is very funny except when it’s not and the film is a startling portrait of the absurdities of power in a dictatorship. The cast includes Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev, Simon Russell Beale as Lavrenti Beria, and Jason Isaacs as Georgy Zhukov, head of the Soviet Army.
Other Films
Game Change