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It’s not a politician, but an ideal that’s assassinated in George Clooney’s “The Ides of March,” a highly sharp and deeply cynical campaign-trail drama that illustrates just how much can be crushed along the road to the White House. The film is about the politics behind politics, and the man behind a man, with Ryan Gosling playing the ultra-effective campaign manager for a presidential hopeful (Clooney) who’s on the cusp of becoming the nation’s Democratic candidate. Gosling’s Stephen Myers puts Clooney’s Gov. Mike Morris, and the nation in general, on a shiny, lofty pedestal, but that’s before he’s tainted by a series of very unfortunate events.
Gosling never truly projects the semi-delusional innocence his character is designed to lose, but he is otherwise perfectly cast, and co-star Paul Giamatti’s opposing strategist even offers a passage that, while singing Stephen’s praises, also speaks to Gosling’s banner year. Giving the kind of baity performance that could easily net him a second Oscar nomination, the thriving superstar spearheads an extraordinary group of actors, which also includes a plucky Marisa Tomei, a show-stopping Phillip Seymour Hoffman and a never-more-striking Evan Rachel Wood.
Before he opts to take a dark, satirical swipe at the whole political system, Clooney (who also co-wrote and co-produced) seems to be cutting through all our GOP discourse with a liberal rally cry, matching the virtues of Morris’ candid, bleeding-heart worldview with a blunt warning against thinking that isn’t as doggedly goal-oriented as that of the other party.
As a director, this other thriving superstar shows a fine aptitude for staging conversation, while shrewdly leaving the inevitable scenes as simple, implied gestures, and even filling the screen with the occasional stars-and-stripes tableau. When in front of the camera, he merely hovers on the sidelines, his politician often more topic than flesh.
This just may be Clooney’s way of commenting on what so many consider the diminished prominence of a certain commander in chief, whose cooling popularity is surely evoked in this most bleak – and smartly compelling – of political dramas.
The Ides of March
R
Three-and-a-half reels out of four
Opens tomorrow in area theaters
Recommended Rental
The Tree of Life
PG-13
Available Tuesday
Virtuoso filmmaker Terrence Malick outdoes himself with “The Tree of Life,” a sweeping, epic symphony of a film that follows the trajectory of the director’s previous work, but thinks as big as big gets and makes the nature of existence its chief subject. Starring Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, the very personal film grows indulgent in its second half, but it’s surely one of 2011’s great cinematic achievements. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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