Playing by the Rules

"The Ides of March"

Any sort of dreams or aspirations of wanting to be a politician or to have any sort of involvement in the game of politics get thrown right out the window after watching this film.  Writer/director/actor George Clooney shows us what it is like to work on a campaign and all the deception that is involved in the process.  Senior campaign spokesman Stephen Meyer (Ryan Gosling) thinks he is above politics.  He's not about getting roped in to situations, promises, and compromises that are going to lead to bad things down the road.  He believes in the constitution and Democratic hopeful Governor Mike Morris (Clooney,) and you should too!  Morris is neck and neck with another Democratic candidate who are both vying to get on the presidential ballot.  Morris' campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Stephen are fairly confident that Morris will make the ticket.

Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti,) campaign manager to the other guy, thinks otherwise.  Tom however has great respect and admiration towards Stephen and offers him a position to work for the other side.  Unless Stephen works for the opposing candidate, Tom knows that Morris will lose.  Where do Stephen's loyalties fall?  Is it about may the better man win?  Or is it about as long as Stephen wins?  Tricky questions that can only lead down that road that our main character thought he would never see.

The Ides of March takes an interesting look at the politics behind the politics of a political campaign.  What drives us to make the decisions that we make?  Clearly from this film it already reconfirms what we already assumed, politics is a dirty, dirty game.  And that's all it really is, a game.  The question is, are you willing to play the game while still keeping your own head above water?  The film does a decent job of answering these questions in such way that is simple enough to understand.  

This is the picture's greatest strength; we're able to understand what is going on.  Lots of good, dialogue driven scenes that take us to an ending point we know we'd get to sooner or later.  We accept this because of the assumptions we already have about the political spectrum.  It is essential to the plot for us to see how Stephen is slowly seduced into changing the way he thinks about what it's going to take to get to the next level.  And we are there with him every step of the way.

Clooney strikes success along the same lines as he did with Good Night, and Good Luck.  He has written a fantastic screenplay with terrific performances from his actors to accompany it.  Gosling has had a great year with being in three completely different films.  This guy has range (and a good agent.)  He is definitely one of the better young working actors the industry has right now.  Clooney seems like the kind of person that knows he the older he gets the more limited acting roles will be available to him.  He has done a fine job of establishing himself as a director that should be taken seriously.  

It’s interesting that this film is about two Democratic candidates.  Given the political climate of Hollywood one would think this would be about the all the punches those nasty Republicans would throw at each other.  It's refreshing to see that both political parties are participants in the ugly race to presidency.  The Ides of March was based on the experiences from someone who worked on the 2004 Howard Dean campaign before he dropped out of the race.  Those experiences were then turned into a play.  The screenplay however doesn't have the feeling of being a play.  Clooney and the other screenwriters changed enough the story to make it cinematic enough to bring it to the screen and he should be applauded for that.  This film shouldn't scar away viewers from voting.  The Ides of March gives us a more in depth look at world that few actually take the plunge into.  After watching this film though, you kind of want to take a shower.