It’s not the saints marching in…
George Clooney’s fourth movie as director, The Ides of March (2011), is an intelligent political thriller with just the right pace and balanced amount of suspense. It’s Clooney showing the complications and war-like relations from which American (and not only American) elections suffer. Is politics all about plotting and backstabbing, as the title reference to 15 March (the date of Julius Ceasar’s murder) relates? Unfortunately, this seems to be the case…
Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) is a young, enthusiastic and brilliant ‘grey eminence’ behind the campaign for Mike Morris (George Clooney) – governor of Pennsylvania and a presidential candidate running against Arkansas senator Ted Pullman (Michael Mantell). Stephen is a junior manager, but his courage and creativity puts him in the spotlight – he’s soon contacted by the PR manager working for Morris’s opponent and invited for a chat. Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) offers Stephen a position in Ambassador Pullman’s campaign. Little does Meyers know that this one single conversation will be the first step on the road to ruin, and possibly out of politics. He soon realises that for senior campaign managers (working for both sides) the words ‘loyalty’ and ‘scruples’ mean less than nothing, and that it is easy to become a puppet in their hands. But, what the campaign bosses don’t suspect is that young Stephen will learn his lessons very well and use his experience to become a puppet master himself…
All this, of course, is coloured with sex scandals (Mike Morris plus an intern), intrigues, unhealthy relations with the corrupt press and even more corrupt side politicians selling their votes for favourable positions. Nothing we don’t already know, of course, but nothing we necessarily want to be reminded of. It is, however, admirable that Clooney gives the audience presents the brutally honest and cynical truth about politics in an attractive, well-prepared dish. The script was co-written by Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon (on whose play Farragut North the film is based). It has a theatrical paste, without unnecessary fireworks, and a brilliant cast.
Gosling shines in his role and once again proves that it’s not only his looks and charm that have won him the attention of the critics, but also his genuine talent. Only Marissa Tomei, as a not entirely friendly journalist, is assigned a sketchy and uninteresting part – it’s the movie’s only weak element.
101 mins.