It turns out that Roman emperors aren’t the only ones who should beware The Ides of March. Cinemagoers seeking sophisticated, politically-flavoured, awards-worthy entertainments are advised to stay at home with their West Wing and The Thick of It box-sets rather than shell out to see the fruits of George Clooney’s fourth stint in the director’s chair.
Whereas Clooney’s behind-the-camera debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) showed a certain wayward promise, more than fulfilled by his outstanding follow-up Good Night and Good Luck (2005), his American-football comedy Leatherheads (2008) was genially unremarkable fluff. Now this adaptation of Beau Willimon’s 2008 play Farragut North sees the uncrowned “King of Hollywood” biting off much more than he can chew and coming quite the cropper as a result.
If nothing else, The Ides of March in some ways confirms Clooney as the Warren Beatty of his generation: a left-leaning Democrat who prefers to channel his energies into “worthy” big-screen projects. Not that Ides could ever be mistaken for Beatty’s magnificent historical epic Reds. The focus here is firmly domestic, following a Democratic primary in Ohio involving two viable candidates who could be propelled towards the White House because, as someone remarks within the first few minutes, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”.
One of the duo is Governor Mike Morris (Clooney), an idealistic but pragmatic chap who in the United States would be classed as some way to the left. But, this being a Hollywood movie, Morris’ opponent is even further to the left – “a pro-choice tax-and-spend liberal” no less. The Republicans, we’re told, reckon Morris’s rival would be an easier foe to vanquish and, Ohio being an open primary in which both Republicans and Democrats can participate, Morris faces no easy path to victory.
The film’s main emphasis is on the ploys and chicanery employed within his campaign. The Ides of March is for those who (correctly) reckon Hunter S Thompson’s finest hour wasn’t Hell’s Angels or Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas but Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, his fly-on-the-wall report on the slow-motion car crash that was George McGovern’s challenge to Richard Nixon. Morris’ chief campaign strategist is wily, obsessive Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose opposite number is the similarly battle-hardened Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti).
A key pawn in the game – or perhaps he’s a slightly tarnished knight – is Zara’s number two, idealistic young Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), whose loyalties come under strain as he realises Morris isn’t the plaster saint he had long imagined. Morris’s feet of clay are revealed thanks to his involvement with 20-year-old intern Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), with whom Stephen is also conducting a semi-illicit dalliance. Stephen is no Candide, but his loss of innocence provides The Ides of March with its main narrative thrust – one fatally hampered by the melodramatic shenanigans which develop after Molly becomes pregnant, with Morris being the Clintonesque culprit.
Considerable stretches in The Ides of March ring true and it’s no surprise to learn that Willimon based his play on his experiences with the highly entertaining but explosively abortive Howard Dean campaign of 2004. The screenplay, credited to Clooney, Willimon and Clooney’s long-time collaborator Grant Heslov, also incorporates several elements of Barack Obama’s rather more adroit assault on the White House.
There’s a certain amount of pleasure to be obtained from seeing such seasoned pros as Giamatti, Hoffman and Marisa Tomei (as muckraking journalist Ida) at work. But this only gets us so far and while Tomei’s role is insultingly underwritten, she comes off better than Wood whose Molly is little more than an amalgamation of plot-contrivances.
This is very much a Boys’ Own version of American politics, a sub-David Mamet affair that’s flippantly cynical in its forensic dissection of the routine cruelties and hypocrisies which play such a pivotal part in all major campaigns. But it relies for its effects on hopelessly implausible and heavy-handed plot developments in its final third which more than undo whatever good work has gone before.
After Drive, Gosling provides further evidence that he almost certainly isn’t Hollywood’s current leading man-in-waiting, while Clooney, for the first time in his career, provides clinching evidence that he really should just stick to the (astronomically lucrative) hairdos and pixie-ish features.
