Just when you thought there wasn’t enough drama, satire or surrealism in American politics…

The first part of Northern Slant’s summer series, ‘Movies and Shakers’ looks at some of the best or more entertaining ways politics has been brought to the big screen. Take a look at some of these clips and trailers from how Hollywood plays politics by proxy and use the comments to let us know what we’ve left out. Obviously, everyone has their own favorites and there are probably almost as many lists as there are movies.

So, in no particular order, here’s what we think would make up a pretty essential queue of viewing around the American political system.

First up is 1964’s The Best Man with a screenplay by Gore Vidal, where Henry Fonda as the old school patrician and Cliff Robertson, an apparent composite of the ideology of Nixon and the charisma of JFK, square off for their party’s nomination (interestingly, the storyline never says which party). It’s a reminder that some things never really change.

 

In Barry Levinson’s 1997 Wag The Dog, a brilliant ensemble cast explores the dark, yet hilarious, side of political manipulation. The timing of its release, coming out just in front of the Monica Lewinsky scandal was – apparently – entirely fortuitous. But after this, who really knows?

 

The final scene of 1972’s The Candidate, has reluctant victor Robert Redford asking his campaign manager Peter Boyle the question that must go through every politician’s mind – perhaps right up to the most recent presidential contest. Jeremy Larner won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

 

The 1998 dramatization of a book (initially published anonymously) by Newsweek political reporter Joe Klein, Primary Colors reflects on the rise of a candidate not a million miles from Bill Clinton, with outstanding lead performances by John Travolta and Emma Thompson. It’s directed by Mike Nichols with a screenplay adapted by his longtime performing partner, Elaine May.

 

In The Contender (2000) Joan Allen faces allegations about her past as she aims to become Jeff Bridges’ Vice-President; with the screenplay raising interesting issues about what is fair game in assessing a candidate’s suitability for high office. A great performance by Gary Oldman as the committee chairman who is opposed to Allen’s nomination.

 

In a similar-ish vein, Aaron Sorkin’s 1995 movie The American President interweaves political ideology and personal lives, with chief executive Michael Douglas breaking off from showing his girlfriend, Annette Bening, the White House china to go bomb a country. One Australian politician even plagiarized part of Sorkin’s screenplay. It’s a bit weird seeing Martin Sheen not playing the President though…

 

The Ides of March is a pretty dark 2011 political drama about the nature of loyalty, written by and starring George Clooney (one of the co-writers, on whose play the movie is based, is Beau Willimon, the creator of the US version of House of Cards.) Another great ensemble cast.

 

As a contrast, and for a glimpse of politics at its purest, as well as some – kind of – light relief, take a look at Election, an at-times cringeworthy exploration of high school student politics and their all-too-real world consequences, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon.

 

Well ahead of its populist time, ‘Vote first, ask questions later’ was the tagline for Bob Roberts, a brilliant 1992 satire in ‘mockumentary’ format, written by and starring Tim Robbins, about a folk singer with some ulterior political motives. As well as featuring the aforementioned Gore Vidal as Roberts’ election opponent, there are some great supporting performances and cameos from people like Alan Rickman, John Cusack and Jack Black.

 

The Distinguished Gentleman, another movie from the same year, has Eddie Murphy as a conman who realizes the real game is playing the lobbyists in the nation’s capital.

 

In Dave, Ivan Reitman’s 1993 comedy, Kevin Kline plays a Presidential lookalike who – surprise surprise – ends up running things better than the guy he’s filling in for. “In a country where anyone can become President, anyone just did” is the tagline.

 

A totally different kind of candidate is Bulworth, Warren Beatty’s California senator who has a revelation and starts “telling it as it is” particularly about race, poverty and politics, while being encouraged by Halle Berry as a community activist. Some of Beatty’s rapping is worth seeing.

 

Perhaps the best type of candidate, though, is one who doesn’t know or care he’s a candidate at all. In Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There Peter Sellers plays a simpleton who through a series of accidental circumstances becomes part of the Washington political elite and is considered wise in a way that observers think is “homespun” and “cuts through the bullshit”, but is really just exactly what it appears. Reality, after all, is whatever we believe it to be.

 

Which brings us back to where we started, 1964, and a great Sellers movie; Dr Strangelove – a dark satire about the Cold War featuring Sellers as the brilliantly named President Merkin Muffley (as well as other great roles, including the eponymous former Nazi scientist of the title.) On the movie’s 50th anniversary, Eric Schlosser wrote in the New Yorker that “almost everything” in it was true.

 

Finally, in what is probably the classic political movie, full of innocence and one man’s misguided belief in a political system that ultimately means different things to different people, James Stewart is the personification of idealism as Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Frank Capra’s 1939 masterpiece.

After all these years, there’s probably a reason Mr Smith hasn’t been remade.

 

Most of these movies hold up pretty well through a modern lens – admittedly the standard of political debate and civic discourse may have changed over the years, but the basic good-versus-evil storyline is still a decent skeleton on which to build a political narrative. Although perhaps now, depending who you talk to it’s a little more cloudy what’s good and what’s evil.

You might be wondering why I didn’t include All The President’s Men or another Watergate–related film, Frost/Nixon. Well, there’ll be another list in a few weeks on journalism and the media in movies, so stay tuned…

Here’s the line-up for the rest of the articles in this summer series – as always, if you have any suggestions for what we should include, let us know.

* 3 June – Political TV series (US and UK)

* 17 June – Journalism movies

* 1 July – Political movies (UK)

* 15 July – Political movies about Ireland/NI

and finishing on 29 July with Best political protest songs/videos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also published on Medium.