George Clooney is dropping into the London Film Festival today for the gala premiere of his new film The Ides Of March – a politically charged drama about an idealistic staffer for a US presidential hopeful who gets a crash course in dirty politics.
To celebrate Gorgeous George’s arrival, Glen Ferris takes a look at some of the most memorable Machiavellian masterminds and optimistic office seekers to ever hit the big screen…
Election
Alexander Payne (who ironically has just finished directing George Clooney in The Descendants – also showing at this year’s LFF) employs some very dirty tricks in this brilliant satire about a high-school election campaign that gets seriously out of control. Matthew Broderick’s broom-up-his-butt teacher gets a bit too involved in the machinations of the over-achieving Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) and, in his attempts to bring her down a peg or two, discovers that a wannabe politician scorned is a very dangerous thing.
Wag The Dog
A movie about a president who turns to manufacturing a war to draw attention away from a personal scandal, Wag The Dog was remarkably prescient seeing as it was released around the same time as Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky debacle and America’s air strike on Iraq. Barry Levinson’s underrated film sees Robert De Niro’s spin doctor employing Dustin Hoffman’s Hollywood producers to divert the news away from the current White House incumbent’s sexual indiscretions and towards a made-up conflict with Albania of all places. Now if that’s not a case of life imitating art, we don’t know what is.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
It’s not all backstabbing double-dealing in politics, you know, sometimes an idealist can make a mark too - well, that’s according to Frank Capra. His 1939 film about ‘democracy in action’ sees Jimmy Stewart’s homespun average joe appointed to see out a recently deceased US senator’s term. But, instead of sitting back and doing nothing, he uncovers corruption and only goes and exposes it like the good man that he really is. Cited as one of the most influential films for politicians and pundits alike, it’s a shame most of them haven’t really got their heads around the moral of the story.
In The Loop
At once a parable about how saying the wrong thing can get you into serious doo-doo and a love letter to inventive swearing, Armando Iannucci’s brilliant Anglo-American comedy finds a lowly British MP (Tom Hollander) caught out in a war-related soundbite and then forced to fly to Washington to sort it all out with the Prime Minister’s bulldog, Malcolm Tucker (the brilliantly foul-mouthed Peter Capaldi), nipping ferociously at his heels. Based on the lauded television series, The Thick Of It, this movie shows that the best way to avoid crying at the state of modern politics is to laugh at it.
Bulworth
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that politicians rarely tell the truth. So what would it take for one such representative of the people to eschew all falsehoods? Well, judging by Warren Beatty’s Bulworth, a slight mental breakdown and aspirations of being a rapper. The ill-judged hip-hop moments aside, Bulworth is everything we’d like a politician to be: fun, verbose and, above all, honest.
All The President’s Men
A list of political must-sees wouldn’t be complete without this fact-based tale of the two truth-seeking reporters who brought down a corrupt administration. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, journalists for The Washington Post who, in the run-up to the 1972 elections, discover evidence of dodgy dealings that lead all the way up to The White House. Their dogged investigation brought about the downfall of Richard Nixon and won them a pair of Pulitzers, not bad for a story that started with an innocuous break-in at the Watergate building.
An Inconvenient Truth
"I’m Al Gore; I used to be the next President of the United States." Bill Clinton’s former wing man introduces himself in typically self-effacing style at the start of his global warming documentary but it’s not long before you’re blown away by the passion and presence of this driven politician. His loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election unfortunately ended his political career (you can’t help but wonder how much better a job he’d have done) but this real-life Mr. Smith found that you don’t have to be in power to make a difference. Check out the trailer here.
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