In case you haven’t noticed the millions of dollars worth of political ads on your television these days: there’s an election going on this year, and it’s heating up. With less than a hundred days left before Americans trundle off to the polling places to cast their ballots, it seems like everywhere you turn you hear political rhetoric and stump speeches. Maybe you loathe politics, or maybe you can’t get enough of The Daily Beast of The Huffington Post. But whatever your level of affection for politics, it has served as a very good backdrop for a number of excellent films over the years.
Let’s not worry about red and blue right now though, let’s just take a look at some of the best politically-themed films of all time in a little retrospective, shall we?
I will gladly go out on a limb and call this film the Greatest Political Satire Film of All Time. That title I believe will stand forever. Created during the absolute peak of the Red Scare and Cold War, this film is my favorite of Stanley Kubrick’s. This dark comedy should be required watching for all Americans. It’s the story of a power-mad general’s insistence on bringing a nuclear holocaust to bear on the Soviet Union, and the ensuing pandemonium and chaos of the two War Rooms’ worth of politicians and high-ranking military officials that are trying to avoid it all costs. Peter Sellers gives the absolute performance of his lifetime, or shall we say performances of his lifetime, as he plays three distinct and memorable characters, the most memorable of course being the title character. It would have won all four of the Oscars it was nominated for had it not come out the same year as “My Fair Lady” and “Mary Poppins,” though I contend it should have beaten both those films hands-down.
Director Alexander Payne, who would later give us “Sideways” and an Academy Award nominated directing turn in last year’s “The Descendants,” piloted this wickedly smart dark comedy about a High School student body election. Matthew Broderick gives one of his best and most creepy performances as the teacher who starts taking everything way too seriously and personally. But the standout performance is most definitely that of Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick. No one has ever made being a teen-aged sociopath so funny.
The story of Woodward and Bernstein, the journalists who helped expose the full depth and scope of the Watergate scandal, this film is masterpiece of suspense. The proof of course is that before viewing the film, you know how it ends, or at least you do if you know anything about Richard Nixon. Yet despite that potential spoiler, the performances given by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are just simply breathtaking. They were two actors at the peak of their game, and the film took home four Oscars though the two must have canceled each other out because neither were even nominated.
This classic suspense film stars Frank Sinatra as a war vet who falls into Communist hands and is then forced to become an assassin. The film is certainly high on Cold War propaganda imagery and themes, but it still stands up for the most part. Angela Landsbury, before she she was solving crimes and writing novels about them in “Murder, She Wrote,” was even nominated for an Oscar for her work in the film. It was later remade with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, but for my money, I like the O.G.
Gary Ross, who also penned “Big,” and wrote and directed this little film you may of heard of called “The Hunger Games,” wrote this comedy. It’s a little bit mistaken identity, a little bit romantic comedy, and a little bit political satire. Kevin Kline stars as a man who has an uncannily similar look to the President of the United States, who is played by the actor also known as Kevin Kline. When the President falls seriously ill, they concoct a plan to put a look-alike in his stead to keep a major scandal from leaking to the press. Sigourney Weaver plays the first lady who is suspicious of a suddenly warm and nice man who resembles her husband nonetheless. Also noteworthy, a reliably solid performance from Sir Ben Kingsley as the Vice-President.
