For A Better Way: Bill McKay for Senate
The key line in The Candidate is supposed to be the final one in which Bill McKay (Robert Redford), having just beaten the incumbent to become the new Senator from California, turns to his manager, the wily Lucas (Peter Boyle) and says, “What do we do now?” But for me, the key line comes a minute or two earlier, when his father, the former governor (Melvyn Douglas), enters the campaign suite, looks at his boy and with a bright, cagy gleam in his eye says, “Son, now you’re a politician.” The younger McKay looks as though he’s been handed a death sentence.
The Candidate, despite the sideburns and old cars, hasn’t aged a bit in 35 years. It’s one of the best films of the ’70s, one of Redford’s watermarks as an actor, a worthy Oscar winner for Jeremy Larner’s screenplay, a brilliantly naturalistic feat of direction by Michael Ritchie and the most cynically realistic view of the modern political machine. Nothing has changed: the spin doctors, the obfuscating campaign ads, the empty speeches. And Redford’s McKay almost seems to predict the rise of Bill Clinton: McKay is smart, handsome, drawn to the power and, yes, playing footsie with a campaign worker. Larner, a former Eugene McCarthy speechwriter, understood politics and politicians from deep inside the war room and that view makes The Candidate play at times like a documentary.
McKay begins as an idealistic lawyer trying to help farmworkers. When professional political worker Lucas approaches him with the idea of running, McKay insists that he will be his own man, and he’ll use the bid as a platform to make substantive change on the important issues of the time. Lucas says sure, you can do that, but you’ll lose. Besides, Lucas knows better. He’s seen something in McKay, in his genes, in his attitude, that even McKay hasn’t admitted to himself. He knows he’s got a sucker fish. Slowly but surely, we see the naive McKay trying to adjust to the political realities: the glad-handing, the greeting of the workers at the factory gates, the impromptu press conferences. We see him trying to fight the machinations of his political ad man (the reliably oily Allen Garfield). We see McKay slowly being manipulated to become a robot candidate, to abandon his stands on issues (abortion, school busing, etc.) in favor of mush-mouth generalities. As he says less, he gains more. And McKay becomes addicted to the game. And once it becomes a game, Lucas and his political operatives, who are only in it for the job and the money, have won again. And, as the film makes painfully and hauntingly clear, the people have lost again.
Ritchie’s film was set up as a real campaign, filmed on the streets of California with advance teams and using real politicos and reporters (including ABC’s Howard K. Smith and “Hardball” talking head Mike Barnicle). It’s shot and cut together beautifully with the rhythm of a politician plunging into event to event. Ritchie doesn’t draw attention to his direction with showy moves, but he makes good use of TV screens that display McKay’s increasingly vapid commercials and news reports on his campaign. They help to both break up the visual scheme of the fictional narrative and add a verite feel.
The acting is excellent across the board. Redford is best in modern roles, and this is his most effective performance alongside “All The President’s Men.” He acts through his eyes and his hesistant body language. He looks as though he’s crouching in a defensive stance as McKay girds for political battle. He displays a very real fear of having sold his soul. (Watch the scene where he breaks down under the campaign strain and starts mocking the banalities of his stump speech.)
Boyle also gives the performance of his career as Lucas: steely and cunning with laser-like eyes peering out from under a Mephistopholean beard. Lucas is a cynical pro with a job to do, a man who knows how to grease his candidate into doing what it takes to win. Melvyn Douglas has a cameo, but an important one, and gives another of his deep, post-”Hud” supporting performances (all the more surprising since he was such a callow leading man back when he was romancing Garbo). Special mention should be made of veteran character actor Don Porter, as the incumbent Senator Crocker Jarmon (Crocker, crock of. A beautiful in-joke). Porter’s nuanced performance captures the hollow, glib patter of the professional politician of the Silent Majority stripe. One of the many marvelous touches of Larner’s screenplay is the sense that McKay is well on his way to becoming another Crocker and would be shocked at the very thought of it.
But that may be Larner’s larger point: the way we delude ourselves is, in turn, the way we delude and ultimately disappoint the country. McKay’s poster tagline is “For A Better Way.” Whether you laugh or cry at that slogan may be a telling sign of how you react to this smart and only slightly satirical political movie masterpiece.
(Cross-posted at Bad For The Glass: badfortheglass.blogspot.com)
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