In its preference for painting with the broadest brush at its disposal and assumption that its audience is more interested in morality plays than questions of process, All the King’s Men is probably the most accurate depiction of the American political process in quite some time. Writer-director Steven Zaillian’s adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 Pulitzer-scoring novelization of the career of Huey Long, Louisiana’s Depression-era “Every Man a King”-crooning Lord of the Fiefdom —previously filmed in 1949 — is more histrionic than a late October campaign ad, all gilded mood lighting, compositions so emphatic they don’t cut together, and a score (by James Horner) with a crescendo never more than a swell or two away.
And, of course, it stars Sean Penn in a juicy, megaphone-amplified centerpiece performance built out of blood, love, and, especially, rhetoric. As Long stand-in Willie Stark, bumpkin idealist turned backroom-savvy corrupt Governor, Penn hard-sells spittle-flecked jeremiads with herky-jerky muscle spasms and roided-up method-mumble inflections; his performance seems unlikely to escape ridicule. As for Stark’s stump speech, it rides the Christ-invoking us-little-guys vs. them-big-guys populist anti-elitism that carried the last two Presidential elections. The difference, granted, is that it’s shaded by Long’s arguably modified socialist “share the wealth” ideals — though this renders Zaillian’s decision to move the setting of the film from the 1930s to the1950s not just purposeless but actively ignorant. (Sure you want to set a movie with a politician talking about the redistribution of wealth at the expense of unfettered corporate commerce in the early 50s and not mention Joe McCarthy? Really?)
Except that he doesn't seem to do much governing. Zaillian sets aside blocks of screen time for Stark’s speechifying but never bothers to specify the articles of impeachment brought against him in the state legislature; his crossover into above-the-law messianic megalomania is less a matter of policy decisions than good-ole-boy philandering. (Zaillian, like Kenneth Starr, banks on his audience conflating a lack of chastity in private life with irresponsibility in the public service.)
Apparently in keeping with the book, the narrative’s actually funneled (but for a few sake-of-convenience exceptions) through Jude Law, playing Stark’s aide, an ex-journalist saddled with the name Jack Burden. Burden’s supposedly Stark’s Nick Carraway, his passive complicity counterpointing the parabolic character arc of his less manor-born ally, but, whiskey at hand to signify crushed romanticism, he ends up trapping the movie in his own amber, in an adolescent idyll with fellow unconvincing teenagers Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo. Here’s where Zaillian really starts grandstanding, finger-jabbing with cinematographer Pawel Edelman’s mooniest moments — Winslet is at one point photographed through a hanging layer of heavy gauze apparently left over from the French plantation sequence of Apocalypse Now Redux — and masochistically repeated flashbacks. And what exactly, one wonders even after the two plot threads’ third act hook-up, does this have to do with the Southern-fried demagogue it wrestles for the center of the movie with? Not much, except that it and the political fable’s glacial set pieces share a tendency to underline and re-underline Things the Audience Must Notice (one portentous whip-pan from a speeding car to a grouping of roadside crosses probably would have been sufficient). Paced as it is to slowest members of the viewing audience, All the King’s Men may actually be worse than a campaign ad — at least they’ve learned to work subliminally.
Opens September 22
And, of course, it stars Sean Penn in a juicy, megaphone-amplified centerpiece performance built out of blood, love, and, especially, rhetoric. As Long stand-in Willie Stark, bumpkin idealist turned backroom-savvy corrupt Governor, Penn hard-sells spittle-flecked jeremiads with herky-jerky muscle spasms and roided-up method-mumble inflections; his performance seems unlikely to escape ridicule. As for Stark’s stump speech, it rides the Christ-invoking us-little-guys vs. them-big-guys populist anti-elitism that carried the last two Presidential elections. The difference, granted, is that it’s shaded by Long’s arguably modified socialist “share the wealth” ideals — though this renders Zaillian’s decision to move the setting of the film from the 1930s to the1950s not just purposeless but actively ignorant. (Sure you want to set a movie with a politician talking about the redistribution of wealth at the expense of unfettered corporate commerce in the early 50s and not mention Joe McCarthy? Really?)
Except that he doesn't seem to do much governing. Zaillian sets aside blocks of screen time for Stark’s speechifying but never bothers to specify the articles of impeachment brought against him in the state legislature; his crossover into above-the-law messianic megalomania is less a matter of policy decisions than good-ole-boy philandering. (Zaillian, like Kenneth Starr, banks on his audience conflating a lack of chastity in private life with irresponsibility in the public service.)
Apparently in keeping with the book, the narrative’s actually funneled (but for a few sake-of-convenience exceptions) through Jude Law, playing Stark’s aide, an ex-journalist saddled with the name Jack Burden. Burden’s supposedly Stark’s Nick Carraway, his passive complicity counterpointing the parabolic character arc of his less manor-born ally, but, whiskey at hand to signify crushed romanticism, he ends up trapping the movie in his own amber, in an adolescent idyll with fellow unconvincing teenagers Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo. Here’s where Zaillian really starts grandstanding, finger-jabbing with cinematographer Pawel Edelman’s mooniest moments — Winslet is at one point photographed through a hanging layer of heavy gauze apparently left over from the French plantation sequence of Apocalypse Now Redux — and masochistically repeated flashbacks. And what exactly, one wonders even after the two plot threads’ third act hook-up, does this have to do with the Southern-fried demagogue it wrestles for the center of the movie with? Not much, except that it and the political fable’s glacial set pieces share a tendency to underline and re-underline Things the Audience Must Notice (one portentous whip-pan from a speeding car to a grouping of roadside crosses probably would have been sufficient). Paced as it is to slowest members of the viewing audience, All the King’s Men may actually be worse than a campaign ad — at least they’ve learned to work subliminally.
Opens September 22
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