BODY POLITIC: Ryan Gosling plays straight-talk counsel to George Clooney's gorgeously coiffed presidential candidate in The Ides of March.
If George Clooney had even one ounce of whimsy in him, he might have affixed a telling subtitle to his new campaign-trail thriller — The Ides of March: Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game. In his shadow-swathed adaptation of former Howard Dean staffer Beau Willimon's play Farragut North, the director and star asserts that even the most vigorous idealist will eventually get stuck by the dirty needle that is American political amorality, whether enterprise, avarice or pure necessity lead to the inoculation. Of course, Clooney also tests our jaded bounds by suggesting altruism still thrives in the rotted Petri dish of public office.
Talking fast and spinning faster, Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling) is real up-and-comer, press secretary to Mike Morris (Clooney), the liberal Pennsylvania governor vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. But he doesn't just view the job as a career ladder with a built-in paycheck — he really believes Morris, who's steered the Commonwealth to incredible education numbers and a balanced budget and has maintained a gorgeous head of hair while doing it, will truly improve peoples' lives once he moves into the White House.
But that doesn't mean he's guileless — while Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Morris' chain-smoking bulldog of a campaign manager, has trouble coaxing his steadfast candidate into fielding back-alley offers, Myers connects with his boss on an intellectual plane, unofficially serving as chief ethical navigator and straight-talk counsel. ("I pay Paul to use the word 'great,'" Morris tells him after an unproductive debate. "I pay you to tell me the truth.") But since no one in the game can stay clean for long, Myers is soon painted into a nasty corner, stuck in a Mexican standoff involving rival campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), nosy Times reporter Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) and (duh) a comely Betty of an intern (Evan Rachel Wood).
Clooney starts and ends The Ides of March with impressive precision, bottling the brawniest chunk of Myers' trajectory without burning minutes on his rise or eventual fall. (Because everyone falls.) In this way, the film circumvents trite Shakespearean commentary on the travails of ambition, using its time on the dais to discuss a difficult vocation that all but requires you to screw yourself over.
