The Ides of March Review

I’ve never really been too interested in overtly political films, but something about the new Clooney/Gosling movie, The Ides of March, made me think it would be a quality film.  After now having seen the film I believe my original take was right.

The film shows a fictional race between the major Democratic contenders as they enter the Ohio Primary.  The film centers on Gosling, who is a top assistant to the Morris, played by Clooney, campaign.  Gosling’s character works for a legendary campaign manager, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who does a tremendous job, which isn’t anything new for him, as he always seems to nail his role.  The dynamic between these two characters is pretty great, their conversations, their philosophies and goes to show how a long-standing relationship can be destroyed by one action alone.

The movie tries to make some points along the lines of loyalties, allegiances, beliefs and the costs of winning, to which I feel they succeed on most accounts.

The primary purpose of the film, for me anyways, is to show the secretive world that exists behind political campaigns.  For every baby held and hand shaken, there are backroom deals, cover-ups and many situations that you, the voter, are never meant to see.  This is the job of a campaign manager, to make their candidate look good, even when they’re swimming in a pond of scum.  Moralities get twisted the further you travel along the campaign trail.  There’s a lot of give and take going on, where sometimes you must sacrifice a conviction or two, all in order to snag a few more votes, or to ensure a prominent person endorses your candidacy.

The film does a great job in this respect.  It shows this hidden world and is really eye opening.  It’s eye opening because, although a work of fiction, every bit of it appears extremely plausible, and sadly enough likely to occur behind the scenes.  I guess the question then comes out, with all the nitpicking done in the media, with all the vetting that goes on in the public eye, where do values stack up in the minds of the voter?  Are scandals more of a reason not to vote for someone or a reason out?  Do rock-solid values and seemingly perfect plans to help the country in remarkable ways, become degraded when a kink in a candidate’s personal armor becomes public information?  Unfortunately I think it does, for two reasons. 

First I believe the voters want to feel, in someway or another, that the candidate is somewhat like them, and when you feel a connection to a candidate you get a particular affinity towards that person.  But when something appears in regards to that person’s character or personality, that directly or even indirectly, is opposite to our own, I believe the voter then feels a disconnect.  Once the disconnect is felt then you begin to question everything, and all the candidate’s positives become undermined by each particular blight. 

Next, when a man or woman is campaigning upon a particular platform, each element of that platform is integral to the entire portrait the public is meant to see.  When, say the candidate is built up as a Family Man or a War Hero, what happens when the Family Man is found to have committed inappropriate relations, or where details are leaked about the War Hero, who at one point in his or her youth, had innocently signed up for some anti-war propaganda?  Do this things matter?  Well, even if they shouldn’t, of course they do.  When a flaw, especially ones that counter their primary portrait, appears, we begin to question everything that person has stated, every single thing, and quite often we come to the conclusion that if he lied to us once, he probably did many other times before.  And many will conclude the potential for dishonesty is too much a risk, and therefor we choose not to place our trust in that candidate, and vote for another, or refrain from voting altogether.

The Ides Of March does a great job of leaving the audience in a state that promotes deep thought.  We begin to wonder about so much that we value, so many of the things that may be lurking behind what we are able to see.  It does a great job in this manner and really paints a world many of us are not very familiar with.

Overall the acting is quality, the story is tight and I just love the fact that there is so, so much grey area, which really promotes audience participation, mentally, well after the story has concluded. 

If you want a feel good movie, this probably isn’t the film to see.  It has so many underhanded, even immoral, deals and behavior that it may cause some unrest and confliction in your assessment or at least the way you view things going forward.  You may not want to see this world, as it could taint the way you look at politicians and even politics in general.  I think it’s safe to say that feel good movies inspire your trust to some extent, not make you question the lines to which trust can be frayed yet still be considered, for the greater good.  Feel good movies don’t have systems of values so easily discarded in order to hopefully secure a win, race or election. 

Sure, values change all the time, but in feel good movies, it changes typically from the negative to the positive, not the other way around.  But if you’re in to this sort of thing, if you like films with enough grey areas that will make you think, you should enjoy The Ides of March. 

MoneyBall

Moneyball dramatizes the Oakland Athletics unlikely rise to success during the 2002 Major League Baseball season.  Although that team did have tremendous success that season, it was the way the team was built that would forever change baseball history.

It’s funny, at one point I considered my baseball fan-hood to be shared equally, between my inherited allegiance, that being the New York Yankees, and this team that had an elephant with a giant A on it’s side for a logo.  ESPN is partially to blame for my brief deviation from the familial tribe.  It was the first season ESPN started showing nightly baseball.  I recall watching game upon game, if remembered correctly that whole first week had double-header after double- header.  One of the teams that got a lot of attention was the Oakland Athletics.  I’m not sure whether it was that particular squad that prompted the early broadcasts or if the lower selection of late night gaming options spurred their games being televised but back then I didn’t care, I was loving every minute of it. 

I remained a pretty loyal fan of the green and gold, that is, until they started unloading their stars, whether by trade or through free agency. My favorite players back then where Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Dennis Eckersley and although not a player, Tony LaRussa was the man in my eyes.  So when the manager left Oakland for St. Louis, my fan-card switched allegiances as well.

To this day, along with my love of all things Yankees, I’ve remained a Cardinal fan as well.  I’ve since adopted a few other teams to pull for as well, namely the Mets and Tigers, but a weird thing took place for me during the process.  After Yankee domination was elating the state and displaced bomber fans across the globe, with their consistent adherence to fielding an almost unbeatable squad, although never wavering away, as I’ve heard some had- those tired of the “Buying” championships notion, I also started watching more games in general.  I would plop myself on the couch and view whatever games I had to choose from, whether it meant catching a Cards game on TBS whenever they played Atlanta, Indian games were played locally back then as were the Yankees of course.  While ESPN continued their tradition of broadcasting MLB games, I also had the opportunity, as did anyone really, to watch more teams than I otherwise would have been able to.  So, my baseball history, as a fan, goes from inheriting a team to follow, to finding other sources to cheer, to watching whatever games I could set my eyes upon.

So with my personal backstory aside, I remember vividly The Streak, and although I didn’t consider myself a current fan, I was pulling for the underdog the entire way.

The system Billy Beane used changed the course of Baseball history.  It proved that the small markets, underfunded clubs, could in fact play with the big boys with astronomical budgets galore.  This idea transcends to other sports as well, where as it gives hope to those following a franchise in the various Oaklands out there.  Living my life in Buffalo, NY I know all too well the ever-present small market ideology that becomes both the causer of anxiety, wondering how long this gig can last, as well as a badge of courage to wear upon your chest.   This latter idea offers the hope that, “when we finally become the best, we’ll have done it in spite of everything.  For all obstacles aside, we’ll be the best in the world.”  This idea, because of the ideas behind the theory Beane used, gives hope in this respect, can, and has, invigorated small towns with the belief that anything is possible.  And now, in this time of economic despair that seems to linger much longer than anyone of us would like, we’re seeing how these “Small” markets are now being the heaviest hit in their relation to the current economy. So, of course, people living in such cities are looking for a reprieve, something to hang their hat upon and get behind.  With the ideas developed by Bill James in his Sabermetric system and then championed by Billy Beane and Peter Brand, fans now know that anything is possible, and on any given night, they chance will be there for them to succeed.

As to the film itself, I felt the acting was up to the level you’d expect.  Brad Pitt did a pretty decent job as Beane, Jonah Hill was pretty great as Brand and Phillip Seymour Hoffman put an outstanding, albeit minor, performance in as A’s manager Art Howe.

The film is set up like a documentary.  It runs linear along a timeline and skips gaps of time by utilizing “chapters” or “headlines.”  Yet, although that documentarian/historian feel is there, you never really feel like you’re watching one at all.  Outside the chapter screens and the small amount of voiceover, Moneyball plays like a film, which, of course, it is.  It really plays tribute to the people and the events that took place, with, if any, a small amount of liberties taken, which, is pretty unusual with Non-Fiction based works. 

I’ve been told that the movie, while not as detailed, is pretty true to the story told in Michael Lewis’s 2003 bestseller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.  I have the book and am eager to jump in their now having seen the movie.  It’s weird that I’ve had the book for sometime now and am typically the kind of person that always reads the book before seeing the film, and in the cases where I see the movie first; rarely do I then head to the pages that inspired it.  It’s different in this case though, as seeing the movie, listening to the overview of what the Sabermetric system is, makes me want to dig deeper and gain an even better understanding.

That’s what this film does.  It offers a brief understanding of what took place back in 2002 and touches upon the ramifications of what Beane and Brand did.  For the casual baseball fan you’ll enjoy learning more about events that have shaped the game you watch today.  For the longtime fan you’ll be taken back to a glorious period where underdogs become favorites and media darlings.  If you’re thinking about seeing the movie, do it.  If you’re not at all interested, you’re probably not reading this review, but I think you’d enjoy Moneyball as well.