The Ides of March

My Grade:  B-

Politics is not my thing.  I vote, but that’s about all of my involvement in politics.  With that said, Ides, which is about the Democratic primary, doesn’t seem like my kind of film... until you check out the cast list.  Clooney, Gosling, Seymour Hoffman, Giamatti, Tomei, and a few other notables sell this film (sort of - it didn’t do extremely well in the box office).  But it sold the film for me.

    

This film is good enough.  It’s not great.  There are some nice twists and turns, but overall it is a slow moving film.  There are a lot of talky scenes and the dialogue is good, but it seems like very little actually happens.  Those of you that are very interested in politics will probably enjoy the film much more than I did.  The nice thing, however, about watching Ides when you have little if any interest in politics, is that you learn about the inner workings of a campaign and how brutal it is.  This is good and bad.  It’s good because you get to see a side of things you don’t usually get to.  It’s bad because, if you’re at all like me, it makes you dislike and distrust politicians even more.

    

This film is based on a play called “Farragut North” which I find ironic because theater is all about acting.  You can’t mask bad acting or a bad story with special effects when the play is performed live.  You also can’t hide behind nifty editing tricks or any other filmic techniques.  I find this ironic because, like theater, the acting is what makes this film worth watching (as you can imagine with the strong cast).  There is no need to write specifically about any individual actor and their performance because everyone is fantastic.  My favorite, however, is Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Paul Zara, Governor Mike Morris’s (George Clooney) senior campaign manager.  He shows the most range in the film which has a lot to do with his character’s arc which involves some of the biggest changes of any character.  He also owns the best scene in the film in which he drops some knowledge on Gosling’s character.

    

Speaking of characters, these are not the strongest ones I have seen.  We don’t learn much about them or really care a lot about them - especially Stephen (Ryan Gosling) who is the main character.  His character does something that you don’t see very often in Hollywood... he starts as a sympathetic character and becomes worse as the film continues.  Usually, the main character finds some sort of redemption or fixes a negative character trait; but in Ides, he goes the wrong way which is actually kind of frustrating and depressing.  Add that with the strange, somewhat abrupt ending and you leave the theater confused.  Sometimes it’s good to leave the theater confused (Inception for instance) but here it doesn’t work out.  

    

Overall, Ides is a good enough film.  It’s one of those that you won’t remember after a month or so, but it will keep you entertained for most of the 101 minutes.  I would suggest it over some of the films I have recently seen (Bucky Larson for instance) but unless you just live for strongly acted films or are really into politics, save your money or go see “50/50.”