Although it works well on television, as numerous series have shown, politics can be a bit of a dry subject for cinema – but when politicians behave in appalling ways, that’s another matter. This week we’re turning our Spotlight on some great films about political scandals which you can watch at home right now.
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| Frost/Nixon |
Frost/Nixon - Apple TV, Amazon,. Google Play
There’s one political scandal which, when it comes to cinema, has outstripped all the others, and that’s Watergate. Whilst The Post and All The President’s Men (which should be watched in that order) are rightfully considered classics, interested viewers can’t afford to miss this magnificent dramatisation of the famous radio conversations which exposed Richard Nixon’s lies and ended his presidency. Frank Langella is magnificent as Tricky Dicky and Michael Sheen captures the keen intelligence of his interrogator, with the visual element bringing a new aspect to the story and revealing a more human side to the real life drama.
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| Weiner |
Weiner - Apple TV, Amazon, Curzon
Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg end up giving us an unexpected front row seat to political scandal in this immersive documentary that follows the 2013 NYC mayoral campaign of Anthony Weiner - a name that, as slang for 'sausage' in America, is just crying out to be the stuff of headlines. He'd already made plenty of them prior to giving the documentarians fly-on-the-wall access to his life, after being caught up in a sexting scandal that saw him resign from the House of Representatives in 2011. What happens next almost beggars belief, not just in terms of further scandal - with his wife and fellow politician Huma Abedin's reactions all caught on camera - but as an insight into politics generally. Discussions about "executing the McDonald's plan" to sneak Weiner into a party - like Boris Johnson in reverse - are something that could have escaped from In The Loop or Veep. As a study of sheer brass neck - no pun intended - it's hard to beat.
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| Loro |
Loro - Amazon Prime, Google Play, Chili
One can’t talk about political scandals without mentioning Silvio Berlusconi. Focusing on the Puglian property developer who set out to infiltrate the premier’s circles by deploying a group of glamorous young women, it addresses the famous bunga bunga parties and reflects on how they affected those involved, as well as explicating financial scandals. At times Paolo Sorrentino deploys his talents to make it look more like a gameshow than a film, with bright lights and flashy costumes and a devastating shallowness which, just sometimes, seem to terrify Berlusconi (played by the always excellent Toni Servillo), as he becomes aware of the fragility of the illusions on which his self-belief and political survival depend. It’s style over substance, but that’s the point.
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| Election |
Election - Sky Go, Apple TV, Now TV Cinema
Andrew Robertson writes: It is a quote often attributed to Kissinger but it was actually William Stanley Sayre of Columbia University who said "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. That is why academic politics are so bitter." Neither had met Tracey Flick. Adapted from a novel Reese Witherspoon has seldom been more driven nor Matthew Broderick more hangdog. All politics are personal but sometimes the blood and the water are equally cold. Tenure struggles and nuclear treaties have nothing on cupcakes.
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| The Man Standing Next |
The Man Standing Next - Amazon, Apple TV, Chili
What happens when a president assumes personal control of more and more of the organs of the state, rewrites the constitution are responds to growing public calls for him to go by declaring martial law? The assassination of Park Chung-hee will always remain a controversial aspect of South Korean history. According to the man who carried it out – a member of the security services – the president’s increasingly aberrant behaviour included threats to do things which were far worse. Director Woo min-ho’s stylish drama explores the events which led up to the killing and points to the danger inherent in overriding civil ways of solving problems.
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| Michael Clayton |
Andrew Robertson writes: The scandal at the heart of Michael Clayton is a corporate one but it is the politics of employment that inform it. Our eponymous protagonist is a fixer but that requires certain compromises in that gap between that which is legal and that which is licit, or moral, or good. Tilda Swinton's turn as another lawyer in a film full of them is as Shakespearean as any part of King Henry VI. It is to its credit that though the chemistry is new the consequences of a poisonous letter are as tragic as of any other era.
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| Il Divo |
Il Divo - MUBI, Chili, Amazon
We return to Italy – and to the winning pairing of Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo –for another portrait of excess with this dramatisation of events in the life of Giulio Andreotti, three time prime minister and a man who has survived more scandals than any other politician in the world. Accused of engaging with the Mafia to arrange a kidnapping and even a murder, he is portrayed here as a man fascinated by the art of politics for its own sake, much more interested in his own success than in doing anything with his power – and as a man who has often depended on luck. Slick on the surface, this is a film with hidden depths, and its superficial beauty itself points up the dangers of a world in which it’s all too easy to lost sight of the viciousness kept only just out of sight.
