Bulworth
On paper, Warren Beatty’s “Bulworth” sounds too far-fetched to work. I know I had a hard time wrapping my brain around it when I watched it back in 1998, where it landed with a thud at the box-office. The previews looked interesting to say the least. The movie? Well, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d seen, but it made an impression. So when I saw it for sale used earlier this year, I decided it was worth buying.
Jay Bulworth is US Senator up for re-election in 1996. All he has to do is say the usual platitudes, run some heartwarming political ads, and vote the right way for certain bills. But something’s wrong with the Senator. One night, on a rainy D.C. evening, Bulworth is in his office, unshaven, and in tears, with his campaign ads running on a loop. The next day, it’s business as usual in the office, until a friend of one of Bulworth’s veteran workers comes in for a secret meeting. The Senator is putting a hit…on himself. After giving the man a check, Bulworth puts it bluntly, “If I’m not dead by Monday, I’ll put a stop on that check.” He hits the campaign trail, and-nothing left to lose (he thinks)-he does something foreign to his nature…he tells the truth. His handlers think he’s nuts, but the voters love it.
Beatty and co-writer Jeremy Pikser have composed a screenplay that swings for the fences between satire and silliness effortlessly. Yes, it seemed like an exaggeration of the modern political landscape at that time, but twelve years later, the film feels like a prophecy of times to come. That doesn’t mean politicians have gotten any more honest (the idea of such an entrenched Senator sticking it to his biggest doners? please), just that the reality of this film and it’s message of political lethargy (on the part of politicians and party hacks) has gotten more real. As a director, Beatty finds just the right tone, and plays it like a maestro, and has a cast (Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, Paul Sorvino, Sean Astin, Jack Warden, and Don Cheadle) around him as an actor that’s as fearless as he is. Nothing is taboo here: interracial romance, political correctness towards African Americans and Jews, political honesty about how bills REALLY become laws (or get stalled), hip-hop, and political salvation when your back is against the wall.
That said, Beatty is after something more with this parable of Bulworth-which is shot by the great Vittorio Storaro (“Apocalypse Now”) with a live eye for excitement and a score by Ennio Morricone that works brilliantly with the hip-hop tracks that pepper the soundtrack-that feels more like a spiritual journey than a political transformation. Never is this better seen than on an impromptu television interview his Chief of Staff (Platt) sets up. Beatty’s rhyming indictments of a broken beyond repair political system are mesmerizing, and all the more tragic for how true they are. These aren’t the words of a man looking to save his political career, but to save his soul from being eaten in any more by such corruption. It’s too free-wheeling to be great, too risky to be anything less than exciting cinema, and too riveting to not be seen by an electorate mad at what’s transpired, and ready for change. I say we’re headed in the right direction with our risk-taking president, but the rank-and-file around him need more Bulworth’s to get on board.
