David Elliott
Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, new
each Friday.
APPETIZER: Review of Vice
Vice, which explores
the “vice” in Vice President, is a buckaroo bonanza of riffs, facts, japes,
ironies and sniper angles on the most powerful No. 2 in our history. Compared
to Dick Cheney, current VP Mike Pence is just a Trumper with a thumper (his pet
rabbit, Marlon Bundo). Cheney, under but more like over George W. Bush, took
command of policy and turned his pompous pimple of a job into a festering boil
of manipulation.
Director and writer Adam
McKay earned comedy stripes with The Legend
of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights,
then greased himself for this dive into the big muck pool with The Big Short. McKay, informed but no
pinchy academic, enters with Vice into
the wild, rootin-tootin’ domain of Dr.
Strangelove, Bulworth, C.S.A., The Interview, Wag the Dog and the
docu-grenades of Michael Moore. Vice
has heft, stretch and swagger. Although its cartoonish energy is in the zestful
graphic tradition of ink-men like Nast, Levine, Feiffer and the Mad gang, it’s less a cartoon than a
manifestoon – a broadside with the vitriolic zeal of prose ambushers like Mencken
and Tom Wolfe. Every laugh pings, provoking a thought.
The key is fearless Christian
Bale. He added 40 pounds, then blob prosthetics, then make-up to become the Wyoming
Wonder of boardroom guile and carnivore appetite, his chubby head turning like
a tank turret, his eyes icicles of feral cunning, his voice a flat monotone
from the man cave of power lust. Bale’s Cheney is great in a Sinclair Lewis
way. Behind the almost bovine, Rotarian demeanor are the will and brain of a Republican
Machiavelli. His anti-charisma is fascinating. Verbally cogent, even terse, Cheney
is also a stunning contrast to our current King Minus, the super-brat whose Oval
Office is an orifice of tweets and tantrums.
Cheney becomes the serial
exploiter of many mentors (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, “Poppi” Bush, Roger Ailes, the
oil industry rajahs). A long-term ally was Donald Rumsfeld, played by Steve
Carell as a vain, prickly weasel. Electorally, Cheney was duller than dust. But
his ambition was a tireless computer of intrigue, and his most crucial enabler
was canny wife Lynne, a real power addict (Amy Adams is Betty Crocker cake with
sprinkles of arsenic). Their love was true, their scheming ruthless. After
Lynne saved Dick from booze, he did one fine thing: he didn’t hurl their
daughter Mary (Alison Pill) into conservative Christian hellfire for being gay.
Vice is sometimes slap-happy with its
cascading materials, allusions and tangents, but I loved the couple’s giddy mock-duet
of Shakespearean plotting. And the surreal fantasy jolt halfway through, using
a credit scroll, is inspired.
Fate arrived as a frisky chump:
George W. Bush. He was, for Cheney, a providential and then presidential vacuum
through which Dick could fire the lightning
bolt of his power grab. “Helping” the amiable, needy candidate select his VP in
2000, Dick chose himself, then shoved the full load of his “unitary executive”
agenda down George’s gulping craw. Control mole Dick and Sam Rockwell’s
goofy-spaniel George become an almost Orwellian update on the contrast synergy of
smooth Dean Martin and nutty Jerry Lewis.
Reality always has the last
laugh, and the cocky vaudeville of Dick & Dork led to dismal punchlines: a court-jacked
election, 9-11, then lies and Iraq, torture and financial collapse. Caught in a
circular maze of smug, false assumptions, the men caused many thousands of
deaths. Once boyish rascals, driving wild and drinking hard on long Western roads,
they “matured” into the reckless chiefs of a deceitful, brutal, fear-mongering regime
that damaged the world (if in Trump Time you have nibbled on Bush-Cheney
nostalgia, this film will end it). Vice
has drawn some critical cavils and harrumphs. But anyone who complains that it
lacks formal rigor or Chomsky chops of analysis is like someone who attends the
circus to work on a crossword puzzle.
Not since Toni Servillo’s
spider-web politico in Il Divo have
movies had a villain so packed for menace behind a plodding façade. Amid the stormy
churn of this satirical mill, notice that the quietly ticking center is a kind
of sick miracle: fat, meat-loving, stress-loaded Dick waddled on for decades,
his health lousy, his coronary crises many. McKay’s device of using a war-vet narrator
is a stretched fuse, but its closing blast is, truly, all heart. Richard Bruce
Cheney, still proud of his long, patriotic service, turns 78 on Jan. 30.
SALAD (A List)
Ten Bravura
Portrayals of the Dark Side of Politics
Claude Rains as Senator Paine, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (director Frank Capra, 1939); Ray
Collins as Boss Jim Gettys, Citizen Kane
(Orson Welles, 1941); Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, All the King’s Men (Robert
Rossen, 1949); Orson Welles as Cesare Borgia, Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949); Ed Begley as Gov. Tom Finley, Sweet Bird of Youth (Richard Brooks,
1962); Cliff Robertson as Sen. Joe Cantwell, The Best Man (Franklin Schaffner, 1964); Philip Baker Hall as
Richard Nixon, Secret Honor (Robert
Altman, 1984); Noah Taylor as Adolf Hitler, Max
(Menno Meyjes, 2002); Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald, 2006) and Toni Servillo
as Giulio Andreotti, Il Divo (Paolo
Sorrentino, 2008).
WINE (Vin
Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)
From
Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood column for March 31, 1949: “It’s a little early to
predict the Oscar-winning player for best supporting actor next year, but
(director) Henry King has picked him: Orson Welles as Borgia in Prince of Foxes. Henry said everybody
told him he would have trouble with Welles, that he’d never be on time. ‘I’ve
never worked with anyone as cooperative,’ says King. ‘He came on location two
days ahead of schedule, and after the first morning always beat me on the set
at 8 a.m.” Inevitably, Orson would twink that: “I used to hide and wait until
he’d start to scream, ‘Where is he? I know the son-of-a-bitch is away in Venice
shooting that goddamn Shakespeare!’
And then I’d step out of the bushes and say, ‘Do you want me, Henry?” (Quotes
from the Welles/Bogdanovich book This is
Orson Welles.)
ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)
In The Producers Kenneth Mars took the part
of Franz Liebkind, Nazi janitor turned idiotic author, after Dustin Hoffman
decamped to star as Benjamin in The
Graduate: “Mars, no Dusty puppy, is more like a Reichstag guard dog. He
sings both the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’ and ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’ He rants about
Churchill and declares that Hitler was ‘a
terrific dancer!” (Quote from the Zero Mostel/The Producers chapter of my book Starlight Rising, available from Amazon, Nook and Kindle.)
DESSERT (An Image)
A great movie image is more than a still,
it’s a distillation.
Cesare
Borgia (Orson Welles) plots his conquest of central Italy in Prince of Foxes (20th Century
Fox, 1949; director Henry King, photographed by Leon Shamroy).
For previous Noshes, scroll below.
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