In the first place, I found the opening scene to be incredibly
moving. The image of the bought-and-paid-for former radical
senator crying in his office, listening to soul music and viewing
the photos of his beloved past is incredibly moving to me. I
sincerely hoppe that it is a real scene, repeated every single
night on capitol hill, but the cynic in me says that most
bought-and-paid-for politicians like it just fine that way.
Nonetheless, the scene very eloquently set the stage for the
elaborate suicide plot that comprises the main plot of the movie,
certainly more convincingly than the later scene of Bulworth's
wife literally in bed with his opponent (although I wish we'd
actually seen the daughter that is apparently the focus of
Bulworth's act of self sacrifice - strange that she was forgotten
by the script so quickly. I'll bet the cutting room floor could
tell some tales.)
There's been a bit of talk about whether the film is more radical
or less radical than it pretends to be. I think I'll have to see
it a time or two more before I make a decision, but on the
surface, I think I agree with most everything Bulworth says when
he's on his spree of "tell 'em what they need, not what they
want." Focusing on the money in politics is exactly the
right approach, I think - it is what drives everything. But I
don't want to get on my racism-is-just-a-subset-of-classism spiel
right now, so onward. Every performance I saw in this movie was
great, even though some plot twists (the redemption of the
crackdealer/loan shark in particular) seemed completely
contrived.
In his first speech about providing opportunity to disadvantaged
youth, he was completely believable as a scumbag with brains who
could rationalize away even his worst acts, but forgiving the
love interests' brother was totally out of character, and cannot
be plausibly attributed to Bulworth's repetition of his
rationalizations on national TV.
As for the transformation of Bulworth, it is definitely the heart
of the movie - as the Senator reconnects himself to the community
that he once loved and then abandoned, he grows bolder and
bolder, telling more of the forbidden truths of american politics
at every step. As Bulworth returns to his youth by imitating
black styles of clothing and music* he regains the meaning and
integrity whose loss made him suicidal to begin with. The love
interest angle is just a sop to Hollywood, as far as I can tell.
At least Halle Berry plays it not just sexy but smart and radical
too. I can't think of the last time I was more turned on by a
character in a movie, than during her speech about how there are
no more black leaders due to the destruction of the black
community's infrastructure. Meeting her family and hearing the
stories of woe and unity was another keeper scene, although it
felt cut short, too. The kale/collard greens thing was a nice
touch, too, showing how habitual stereotyping of and lip service
to blacks has become to Bulworth.
Still, I couldn't help but wonder if the politics thing was all
smoke and mirrors, and if maybe the real issue of the film was
Bulworths internal turmoil. I got the impression of a severely
bi-polar individual from Beatty's preformance; a man who can
order his own murder one day, and find himself with more to live
for than ever before the next. At the end, after his manic phase
has run its course and he falls asleep in the love interests
spare room, he seems to have returned to where he was before.
Newly reelected, with the death sentence off his head, I was
expecting the facts of his situation to crash in heavily on
Bulworth and for him to return to his old style of just another
incumbent turning tricks for the moneyed interests. The insurance
guy killing him made for a tidy and believable ending, as far as
I was concerned, but it seemed like a bit of a cop out. The
questions loomed in my mind; now that they see how powerful
candor is, are other politicians going to try and coattail
Bulworth? Now that the media has been duped into airing an expose
of themselves, are they going to chase the story in an attempt to
scoop each other or try and bury it? Is Bulworth's attraction to
the young Halle Berry character an expression of longing for his
beloved yet estranged daughter, or is it real?
Unfortunately, the message of the movie seemed ultimately to be
"don't rock the boat, or you're gonna catch a bullet"
and I'm sure that's not what Beatty intended.
*yeah, I'm reading a lot into this, but the phenomenon is
extremely widespread among America's rebellious youth, and has
been for about 100 years, minimum.
