Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating: R
Director: George Clooney
Quick Impressions:
I feel like I’ve seen The Ides of March several times before, and I didn’t like it that much then, either. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a bad movie. It has a phenomenal cast, most of whom turn in better than average performances. And it has a coherent, focused, fairly fast-paced story. It just feels a little stale.
I did like the movie, but it was awfully heavy handed. A bit more subtlety would have been nice—especially in the metaphor department. The only thing subtle is the way the allusion of the title applies to what actually happens in the movie (i.e., no one stabs anyone. No togas. Ides gives us Caesar, and it gives us betrayal, but not in the form we might expect).
I can say that unlike tons of other movies out this year, the theatrical trailer does not spoil the ending of the movie, so that’s a plus. Maybe my expectations were too high because I loved Good Night and Good Luck and went in knowing this movie considers itself an Oscar contender. I haven’t seen a lot of other Oscar fare yet, so I don’t know the strength of the competition. But I will say that I think last week’s unexpected treat 50/50 was a better movie with stronger performances, which is astonishing considering the caliber of the cast gathered for The Ides of March.
The Good:
When the cast consists of Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marissa Tomei, and Jeffrey Wright how could a character-driven movie that relies on performances instead of special effects possibly be bad? Clooney is directing a talented ensemble, and, not surprisingly, the movie is easy to watch.
Pairing Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti as campaign managers for opposing candidates is an inspired casting choice. I’ve never yet seen Hoffman give a bad performance, and I thought Giamatti was amazingly strong here. To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of his work. He’s a good actor. For some totally unfair, ineffable reason, I just don’t like him. But I liked him in this and found his performance possibly the best in the film.
Ryan Gosling has a wonderful intensity that used to make me hate him, but I’ve come around to his side recently. I think his performance sometimes veers into over-the-top territory here, but I don’t blame him for that. Based on his performances in this film and in Drive, he’s starting to remind me a little of a young Humphrey Bogart. (I don’t mean that he looks or sounds like Bogart, but that he’s good at portraying a type of character often played by Bogart, the man on his own who after being blindsided by the world, spends the rest of the movie being one step ahead.)
And of course, this film provides a wonderful forum for Clooney to air his political beliefs. He creates a dream-come-true type candidate who can say all sorts of wonderful things without ever having to act on them. For that reason alone, this would be a great movie to show in an academic setting, perfect for generating a class discussion.
The Negatives:
Two things working in tandem bothered me most about this film: 1) It’s so heavy handed, and yet 2) Despite it’s total lack of subtlety, it’s still fails to be exciting. I don’t mean that the plot isn’t interesting, just that the story isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. (I say “we” because I’m positive that I’m not the only one who has seen variations of this story nine thousand times before.)
I also think that Ryan Gosling’s wounded stares dominate the screen a little too often. Gosling’s an actor who can do a lot with silences, and here I think he’s doing too much. Maybe Clooney isn’t the right director for him, but I felt his somewhat similar performance in the recent film Drive worked much better. It’s not that Gosling’s reactions are inappropriate (though they might be more appropriate in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie about a little boy being told there is no Santa Claus). It’s the film’s insistence on dwelling on them that I find inappropriate. In the scene in his hotel room moments after he answers the wrong phone by mistake, his stare becomes so huge, so intense, and so stricken so quickly that the effect is almost comical.
The other slight complaint I have involves Evan Rachel Wood’s character, Molly the intern. Her father is a very prominent figure, surely one with enough intelligence to wonder where she acquired proscription drugs and enough clout to find out. Also, her picture has been all over the news. Since she’s the daughter of an important man and attached to an important campaign, wouldn’t someone who recognized her from the news find that worth mentioning to someone? (Especially if someone comes inquiring—i.e., “Hello, you seem to have written my daughter all of these prescriptions for drugs.”)
Best Scene:
The second time Stephen and Duffy talk in person stands out to me because only as this conversation unfolds does Stephen actually begin to understand what’s happening. When the scene begins he’s angry, purposeful, driven, certain. Only near the end of the scene does he begin to realize how confused he’s been the entire time, without even being aware of his own lack of insight.
Most Oscar-worthy Moment:
This is a stellar cast, and anyone could get Oscar attention, but I think that Duffy’s scenes are some of the strongest in the movie, in part because of the reaction he provokes in Stephen and Paul, in part because Paul Giamatti does some really fine acting. He and Philip Seymour Hoffman are the only two in the cast who play their characters with any degree of subtlety, a quality that might have improved the movie on the whole if it had been more omnipresent.
Best Surprise:
Evan Rachel Wood’s character is definitely the strangest of the movie. She’s the one person who doesn’t seem to fit in with the other characters, doesn’t seem important to the story. At first, she seems like a baffling though charming distraction. Gradually, you start to realize that the rest of the movie is the distraction, and she’s the story.
The Performances:
Marissa Tomei was surprisingly great as reporter Ida Horowicz, a character so completely what Hollwood’s vision of a no-nonsense female reporter should be that she seemed to step out of the 1940s cinema and onto the 2011 screen. Don’t misunderstand. Tomei is a fantastic actress. I’m not surprised that she gave a good performance. It’s just hard to say what makes the performance so good, so engaging. The character seems almost like a contrived stereo-type so vibrant that she’s larger than life and more authentic than real.
Jennifer Ehle was also good as Governor Morris’s supportive wife. Watching her in her first long scene, I kept asking myself, Who is this woman whose face looks like Meryl Streep’s from the bottom up but not from the top down? I thought she gave a lovely and understated performance, but I was driven crazy by the fact that I could not place her face until I saw her name in the credits—Jennifer Ehle (from Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth, daughter of former Aunt May Rosmary Harris). I’m used to seeing her with dark hair.
Easily the most perplexing character in the movie, intern Molly Stearns is played memorably by Evan Rachel Wood. Molly is a strange character. She’s at once the most baffling and the easiest to understand. She’s troublingly female. She seems to be the only important person working for the campaign who doesn’t have the good sense to be a man or to think like one. Wood brings a lot of energy, a charisma to the role that’s essential to carrying off the part.
George Clooney has some nice moments as Governor Mike Morris, charmingly at ease at his best, but perhaps more compelling at his worst. His best work in the film comes during the third act. (Maybe since this is The Ides of March, I should call it the fifth act.) I can’t quite decide if he’s pleasingly intense or too intense. He’s right on the line.
Ryan Gosling is not as good in this film as he is in Drive. I think sometimes he’s too overdramatic as the soon-to-be-jaded idealist Stephen Myers, which seems impossible when he’s so stoic all the time. (Then again, this is The Ides of March, and Brutus was a pretty over-the-top and emotionally unglued in his stoicism, too.) It’s not that I don’t think Gosling is playing the character well. It’s just that this character feels entirely too familiar—(We can’t be expected to be as shocked as he is by what’s happening around him and to him!)—and I think the movie relies too much on showing Gosling’s shock and pain. I think he needs different direction.
Both Philip Seymour Hoffman as Paul and Paul Giamatti as Duffy bring a kind of effortless subtlety to their roles that is conspicuously lacking in the rest of the movie. I always like Hoffman, but I think Giamatti is at his best here, and the film is at its best when he’s on screen.
Overall:
The Ides of March is solid and reasonably entertaining, good but not great. If it gets nominated for picture or director, I’d attribute that to the popularity of George Clooney rather than the film’s merits. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s a familiar one—and should a film really be that familiar the first time you see it?