The Ides Of March, Venice Film Festival - review

Festival opener: George Clooney in Venice
10 April 2012

Pure politics isn't very often an audience-drawing subject matter for the cinema. Political corruption does a bit better. But political corruption plus sex is the best bet.

George Clooney's The Ides of March, which opens the 68th Venice Film Festival tonight, has it all.

An ultra-liberal Democratic candidate (Clooney himself) who proclaims unusually honest policies, is caught out having had a one-night stand with Evan Rachel Wood's pretty young intern who doesn't know it but she has to have an abortion.

All this is made worse by the fact that Ryan Gosling's idealistic press secretary has just been sacked, knows the secret and is prepared to blurt it out to the press if he's not reinstated.

There are wheels within wheels in this intelligently written tale of political chicanery which vies with Clooney's Good Night, And Good Luck as the kind of relevant film Hollywood should make but seldom does these days. To direct, write and act in such a film proves Clooney to be a good deal more than the Clark Gable of his generation.

The film turns the screw on its politicos and their helpers slowly but surely, aided by a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright and Marisa Tomei.

It attempts to show that so many compromises are made on the way to becoming a presidential candidate, especially if there's a secret the voters cannot be told, that even the best man or woman can be soiled by the experience.

The best remark has an aide to the candidate observing that you can start a futile and costly war or bankrupt a country. But you can't have an affair with an intern. One wonders what Bill Clinton would say to that.

The Ides Of March

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