USA
4.5*
Director:
Franklin J. Schaffner
Screenwriter:
Gore Vidal
Director of Photography:
Haskell Wexler
Running time: 95 minutes
Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, which dates back nearly half a century, is as relevant to our understanding of the American political system as ever. As of this writing, the 2012 GOP candidates have not been narrowed down to a single front-runner yet; since many have speculated about the likelihood of a brokered convention, I thought a film that deals with this term might be rather apropos.
What is a brokered convention?
A convention is the party in the big tent with all the delegates (and, if it is the Democratic Party today, all the superdelegates as well), usually held in August or September in a big ol’ sports arena or convention centre, where the candidate who has survived six months of primaries and caucuses formally accepts his party’s nomination as candidate for the presidency and the election in November.
A brokered convention occurs when no such candidate has obtained a majority of the votes and has to undergo the added stress of being put on a ballot during the convention and surviving round after round, with candidates dropping out one by one, until one candidate remains. The delegates of candidates that drop out have to realign themselves with the remaining candidates; thus, a lot of dealing inside back rooms goes on in the process.
In The Best Man, there are two clear front-runners for the presidency: A former Secretary of State, William Russell is a careful politician who seems to overthink every problem before making a wholly informed decision and therefore is perceived to be passive, even weak. Think Obama without the charisma. The other candidate is Joe Cantwell, an anti-communist anti-mafia, religious activist whose rhetoric is enough to hordes of screaming fans who mistake fundamentalist zeal for patriotism.
In the film’s first minutes, we learn that the former president, still a major force in this political party, which is never named and whose platform is never stated, is about to endorse either Russell or Cantwell, and obviously both candidates are courting his approval.
It is also made quite clear that Russell has been a very unfaithful husband, though his wife is prepared to become first lady and therefore go along with Russell’s bid for the White House for the time being. Cantwell has also discovered some unsavoury records of Russell’s mental state (think Thomas Eagleton), which he is ready to release if it would be politically expedient.
Despite Russell’s philandering, his questionable mental stability and his atheism (oh, yes, a big negative for a presidential candidate in the 1960s and arguably even worse today), he is a likeable character who seems to want to lift the country up, not just himself. It certainly helps that the character is played by Henry Fonda.
Eagleton, Clinton, Obama and the 2012 Republican candidates for the presidency are just some of the real-life political figures I had in mind while I was watching the film. The succession of 36 faces during the opening credits, from Washington to Johnson, all leading up to a full-screen shot of the White House, always impresses the historical scale of the office on the viewer, and in this case we are reminded again there are no perfect candidates: only candidates who will be more preferable or less embarrassing holders of the office.
The film’s background is peppered with catchy slogans (“Hustle with Russell”, “MerWIN to WIN”) and the action is set over a very short period of time: less than 48 hours. The characters and the party they belong to are vague, but being politicians this quality makes them specific enough to be entirely credible and representative of all kinds of recognizable political personas.
With a screenplay written by Gore Vidal, based on his play, this film has an ear for great dialogue and a very vivid sense of reality. One excellent moment among many others belongs to the former president, Art Hockstader, who, upon learning of Cantwell’s devious plans, gives him a look full of hate and proclaims: “It’s not that I object to you being a bastard… It’s your being such a stupid bastard that I object to!”
This film is better than the other well-known political films from the early sixties, such as The Manchurian Candidate or Seven Days in May, because it comes to the point very quickly, is filled with people and events that we recognize, even today, and the story contains a big conundrum that the characters need to resolve before a satisfactory conclusion can be reached — and this is exactly what the film pulls off, with significant consequences. There are few scenes between the candidates and their wives, but what we see is to the point and reveals a great deal about the domestic politics of the presidency.
The mudslinging and the possibility that a ludicrous attack just might stick also hit close to home, as the recent (2012) GOP primaries have shown. In one comment, a character mentions that once, in the South, “a candidate […] got elected for claiming his opponent’s wife was a thespian.” This comes on the heels of a discussion about the alleged homosexuality of one of the candidates for the presidency, and Vidal’s use of this theme shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone — it is handled well, discreetly, but the scenes with a, erm, whistleblower, a guy called Sheldon Bascomb, are excruciatingly uncomfortable and make the film drag at the only point during its 95-minute running time.
Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson are both excellent in the main roles, but it is charming former president played by Lee Tracy who really makes an impression as someone who is playing the system with a good political head, even as he loses faith in the system because he knows what corruption is possible (and permissible). Fonda’s character has some of the same insights, though he is slow to react and it is very sensible on the part of Vidal to make us wonder whether we should support him despite our misgivings — a timeless question.