God, what a depressing movie. That's really all there is to say about it.
OK, in all seriousness. It's a movie version of a book by the same name that only lightly fictionalized the rise in the 1930s of Huey "Kingfish" Long. Never heard of him? He doesn't get talked about much today, but he was a highly controversial figure in the mid 20th century. As corrupt a politician as they come, he used his ill-gotten influence to get a lot of badly needed infrastructure built in Louisiana during the Great Depression (as well as to amass great personal power and wealth, as one does when one is a corrupt politician). Obviously he was a populist, though ostensibly a Democrat, and was notable for appealing to black and white demographics in the highly segregated South (though as an interesting sidenote there is not a single black character in the movie, not even as an extra). Long made it all the way to the US Senate and was eyeing a presidential run when he was assassinated by the relative of a political enemy. He was an interesting enough man that Ken Burns make an entire documentary about him. (This is a dude whose other documentaries usually have big, sweeping titles like "The National Park Service" and "The Civil War.")
The movie follows all of this quite closely, leaving out only that "Willie Stark" was elected to national office, choosing to have him assassinated at the Louisiana state courthouse in Baton Rouge rather than on the steps of the US Capitol Building as happened to his real-life counterpart (in those days security wasn't so tight and you actually had a prayer of assassinating a Senator with a handgun). The story here is told from the perspective of an idealistic journalist who becomes part of "Stark's" closest staff and watches him go from well-meaning backwater lawyer to towering dictator who even resorts to having people killed to get them out of the way, corrupting everyone around him (including the narrator) along the way like a cancer.
There was apparently a poorly received attempt at a remake about ten years ago, which does and doesn't surprise me. The star-studded cast should have been able to make it work, but the subject matter is difficult to handle at the best of times and I don't think the climate in 2007 was really right for asking the "corrupt politician who gets stuff done: OK/Not OK?" question. Its predecessor is certainly way down on my list of favorites in the Oscar movies we've watched thus far.
Watched: April 8, 2018
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