As 2024 draws to a close, you might be tired of watching politicians act as if they are the stars of an epic film.
So, as the holidays draw near and you settle down by the proverbial fire, why not watch an actual movie about politics?
Movies skewer and satirize a political system that dearly deserves both. They can warn us of the dangers of hungering for power and lay bare the human foibles and egos at the heart of it all. And once in a while, they can give us a reason to believe in politics’ higher purpose.
Last week, I asked you to tell me your favorite movies about politics — and I asked around our newsroom, too. Maggie Haberman’s favorite politics movie is “The Parallax View,” the 1974 Warren Beatty thriller about a newspaper reporter investigating an assassination. Dick Stevenson, our next Washington bureau chief, went with the 1976 classic “All the President’s Men.” Lisa Lerer added a deep cut: the 2008 romantic comedy “Definitely, Maybe,” about the romantic misadventures of a former political consultant played by Ryan Reynolds.
And then there is Carl Hulse, our chief Washington correspondent. I spoke to him by phone yesterday while he was in the halls of the Capitol with a front-row seat for the end-of-year government-funding blockbuster that nobody wanted. Carl loves the 1964 film “The Best Man” and HBO’s “Recount,” a recreation of the 2000 presidential election that he says was just like the real thing. (He would know — he was there!)
If real politics were a movie, I asked him, would it be a thriller? A tragedy?
“A comedy, without a doubt,” he said.
What follows is a sampling of your selections. As with my list of books about politics from earlier this year, it’s not meant to be exhaustive, and I know some classics aren’t here. But it is a list of politics films that stuck with you, made you laugh or — in many cases — seemed to get only more prescient with time.
“The Great McGinty,” 1940: Katy Bolger taught a Friday after-school movie class in New York City for 20 years, and she needed something that would keep high-schoolers in their seats. Her top pick? “The Great McGinty.” It’s about a “reform” mayor and then governor who gets his start by voting 37 times in a rigged election. “The film is so filled with crooked politicians and crazy plot devices, it keeps you watching while laughing,” Bolger wrote.
“A Face in the Crowd,” 1957: A degenerate guitar player is plucked from a jail cell by a radio producer and becomes a national sensation, using the power of television and his purported connection to everyday Americans to fuel a right-wing presidential campaign. It’s been described in The New York Times as a “cautionary tale about populism” — and it’s the film that taught many of you what it means to be a demagogue. “I was 12 years old when I saw ‘A Face in the Crowd,’ but already found the character played by Andy Griffith terrifying,” wrote Jack Hall of Houston, describing it as the “first movie that awakened my political sensitivities.”
“Spartacus,” 1960: ’Tis the season of “Gladiator II,” and Denzel Washington’s delicious declaration, “That’s politicssss.” But Susan Shapiro of Logan, Utah, is thinking about a different set of gladiators. “Spartacus,” she wrote, is “a grand, historical epic that makes a clear case for the power of the people, for women’s rights and racial equality.”
“Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” 1964: Some of you wrote in asking if this Kubrick masterpiece would count for our purposes. Of course! The tale of the Air Force general Jack Ripper centers on an issue that has suddenly found itself quite relevant: distrust of fluoride in the drinking supply. It’s also the movie that the Times film critic Manohla Dargis chose when I asked her to tell us about one of her favorites, and she pointed me to this quotation:
“Do you realize,” General Ripper asks, “that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?”
“The Candidate,” 1972: The political veterans among you found this Robert Redford romp with an indelible final scene particularly uncanny. It perfectly captures California politics of the 1970s, wrote Keith Curry, the former mayor of Newport Beach, Calif. And to Bob Mulqueen, a political consultant from Des Moines who has worked on campaigns for five decades, no film feels more authentic.
“Blaze,” 1989: Paul Newman as Gov. Earl Long of Louisiana. A stripper named Blaze Starr. And a scandal. “The film deftly captures the theater and pageantry of American politics, the optimism and possibility of American democracy” with a mix of “moral degradation and corruption,” wrote Eric Orner of Tarrytown, N.Y. And did I mention Paul Newman?
“Bob Roberts,” 1992: Tim Robbins’s mockumentary political satire about a folk singer who becomes an insurgent, far-right Senate candidate feels “more relevant than ever,” wrote David Pederson of Iowa City.
“Dave,” 1993: When we talk about “fantasy,” we usually think of centaurs and wizards and warring houses. And then there is the comedy “Dave,” in which a regular guy finds himself standing in for the president, and Washington actually gets something done. “It is completely and utterly ridiculous about actual politics — but it’s so much fun,” wrote William Adler of Skokie, Ill. “Watch Dave fix the national debt AND pass a jobs bill!”
“The American President,” 1995: Imagine the mid-1990s. People were hopeful. President Bill Clinton’s scandals had not yet burst into the open. And a fictional president played by Michael Douglas was falling for a lobbyist played by Annette Bening.
“Does the political plot make coherent sense? No. Is it morally complex? No. Is it particularly beautiful to watch? No,” wrote Nina Howe-Goldstein, of Cambridge, Mass. “But coherency and logic, I would argue, are not the goal of a movie about politics — because if they were, you would simply have no good political movies.”
“Wag the Dog,” 1997: When the president gets caught in a sex scandal, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro step in as a Hollywood producer and a political consultant who fabricate a war to distract the public. “It gets more realistic every election cycle,” wrote Bill Hillsman of Minneapolis.
“Election,” 1999: I will leave it to somebody else to explain why the 1990s were just so good for political movies. But this Reese Witherspoon movie, about a high schooler’s no-holds-barred attempt to get elected class president, and a government teacher’s secret effort to stop her, is my personal favorite.
“The Lives of Others,” 2006: This German drama about Stasi surveillance might not exactly be a movie about politics “as commonly understood,” wrote Lee Badger of Milan, Mo. But he sees it as a “warning to what can happen with governmental overreach.”
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