In actor-director George Clooney’s latest effort “The Ides of March,” the central question is: Do inherently corrupt individuals gravitate toward politics, or does the nature of politics corrupt inherently good individuals?
To answer this, Clooney relies as much on the personal experiences of his father’s failed 2004 congressional campaign as the source material, “Farragut North” — based on Howard Dean’s unsuccessful campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination — and provides a surprisingly complex view of the relationship between moral and political failure.
In the eye of the storm is golden-boy political consultant Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), who helps manage Gov. Mike Morris’ (Clooney) bid for the presidential nomination. Morris is on the verge of losing the key battleground state of Ohio and needs to secure the endorsement of recently defeated candidate Sen. Thompson (Jeffrey Wright) in order to win the nomination. The only problem is Thompson is a dirty politician who wants to leverage his delegates for a cabinet-level office, an offer the ideologically pure Morris refuses.
As Stephen attempts to turn the poll numbers around in Ohio, the rival campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) offers to hire him. An impassioned Stephen states that, in addition to considering Morris a friend, he believes Morris is the only candidate who can change the lives of average Americans. However, Stephen soon discovers an affair between Morris and an attractive staffer, Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood), who also happens to be the daughter of the Chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Meanwhile, the Morris campaign discovers Stephen met with the rival campaign, leading each person to question the loyalty of the other. When The New York Times reporter Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) threatens to break the story, time begins to run out for the campaign as the political maneuvering becomes increasingly desperate.
Clooney wisely focuses his story on the Democratic presidential primary and the infighting that follows, rather than attempt to draw the distinction between red-state and blue-state mentality that has plagued political films of the last decade. He also adeptly embeds a layer of irony and black humor into the mandatory political grandstanding that spares “The Ides of March” from becoming a civics lesson.
Despite the trailer’s best attempt to portray “The Ides of March” as a political thriller, the film focuses on Stephen’s introduction into the shocking realities of working in politics. However, because the film is only concerned with the corruption of the individual, “The Ides of March” ends abruptly, as though it were the first two acts of a three-act film.
As Stephen’s convictions turn against him, his body becomes engulfed in shadows until he is little more than a blurred silhouette of the man he once was.
Directed by: George Clooney
Release Date: Oct. 7
Grade: B
