This story of a political race in Bolivia didn't get much ballyhooed and I wasn't expecting much. Neither Billy Bob Thornton nor Sandra Bullock are unknown quantities, so we have an idea of their range. And who knows anything about Bolivia? Who could find it on a map? What is interesting about Bolivia, except for the cocaine traffic and the Aymara natives who have a reputation among anthropologists for being the most nasty people you could study? Well we can forget all of that anyway because in the frame provided by this movie the country's name shouldn't be Bolivia but rather "Bolivia." It about the stressful and demeaning business of electoral politics and the toll it takes on its practitioners.
"Primary Colors," about such a race in the US, was released in 1998 and one of the chief questions raised was, "Should we go negative?" Oh, we've come a long way, Baby. It would be a stunning revelation now if anyone asked, "Shouldn't we say something positive?" The negative approach shown in this film is in no way subtle. It's not surgically applied. Someone handed the writers and director a meat ax. Here are some of the tricks, so vile that they never even occurred to me. You find some filthy group like the Ubermenschen of America, contribute some money in their name to the opposition candidate, and then publicize the contribution. Simple.
You can also throw all sorts of accusations at the opponent, no matter how ridiculous, and then wait until the lies take their toll or the opponent is forced to publicly deny them. It's a win win, as the Swiftboat movement demonstrated.
The rumors -- so ready for contagion in this internet age -- don't even have to be declarative statement. They can contaminate the media even if they're phrased as questions. "Are Saddam's WMDs Now in Syria?" That's a real one. Here's one I just made up. "Is the Pope Really a Transgender?" Catches your attention, doesn't it?
The beauty of negative campaigning is that none of it needs to be founded in fact. It only needs to be fed to a cooperative media until it becomes part of the public's data base, at least the data base shared by a certain sector of social space. And it needs to be swallowed whole by that sector. A fan told Adlai Stevenson, "Every thinking person will vote for you." Stevenson replied, "That's not enough. I need a majority."
That anecdote, by the way, is one of several sprinkled throughout the dialog, both by the somber, cynical Sandra Bullock, and the bald, cynical Billy Bob Thornton, two opposites who understand and get along quite well with one another, rather like Mary Matalin and James Carville. The juicy lines don't all have to do with politics. Thornton to Bullock: "You know, when I leave here and go home I'm going to spend an hour pleasuring myself thinking of you."
Two performances are worth extra mention. I can't recall a better one from Sandra Bullock. She's no longer a kid. She brings a darkly burnished quality to the role. Her default posture is a grim stance with her arms folded across her chest, a fleshy wall between her milieu and her heart. Zoe Kazan is quite good as translator. She doesn't get much space and except for an oddly pretty face would be background instead of figure. I just like her because of the breathless vigilance she brought to her few minutes on screen as a minion in "Fracture."
Despite a last-minute attempt to provide some uplift, it's rather a bitter movie. Bullock compares politics to advertising. "You convince people they want something they don't need, you sell it to them, and you make a profit from it."
"Primary Colors," about such a race in the US, was released in 1998 and one of the chief questions raised was, "Should we go negative?" Oh, we've come a long way, Baby. It would be a stunning revelation now if anyone asked, "Shouldn't we say something positive?" The negative approach shown in this film is in no way subtle. It's not surgically applied. Someone handed the writers and director a meat ax. Here are some of the tricks, so vile that they never even occurred to me. You find some filthy group like the Ubermenschen of America, contribute some money in their name to the opposition candidate, and then publicize the contribution. Simple.
You can also throw all sorts of accusations at the opponent, no matter how ridiculous, and then wait until the lies take their toll or the opponent is forced to publicly deny them. It's a win win, as the Swiftboat movement demonstrated.
The rumors -- so ready for contagion in this internet age -- don't even have to be declarative statement. They can contaminate the media even if they're phrased as questions. "Are Saddam's WMDs Now in Syria?" That's a real one. Here's one I just made up. "Is the Pope Really a Transgender?" Catches your attention, doesn't it?
The beauty of negative campaigning is that none of it needs to be founded in fact. It only needs to be fed to a cooperative media until it becomes part of the public's data base, at least the data base shared by a certain sector of social space. And it needs to be swallowed whole by that sector. A fan told Adlai Stevenson, "Every thinking person will vote for you." Stevenson replied, "That's not enough. I need a majority."
That anecdote, by the way, is one of several sprinkled throughout the dialog, both by the somber, cynical Sandra Bullock, and the bald, cynical Billy Bob Thornton, two opposites who understand and get along quite well with one another, rather like Mary Matalin and James Carville. The juicy lines don't all have to do with politics. Thornton to Bullock: "You know, when I leave here and go home I'm going to spend an hour pleasuring myself thinking of you."
Two performances are worth extra mention. I can't recall a better one from Sandra Bullock. She's no longer a kid. She brings a darkly burnished quality to the role. Her default posture is a grim stance with her arms folded across her chest, a fleshy wall between her milieu and her heart. Zoe Kazan is quite good as translator. She doesn't get much space and except for an oddly pretty face would be background instead of figure. I just like her because of the breathless vigilance she brought to her few minutes on screen as a minion in "Fracture."
Despite a last-minute attempt to provide some uplift, it's rather a bitter movie. Bullock compares politics to advertising. "You convince people they want something they don't need, you sell it to them, and you make a profit from it."