Well, here we are. America has arrived at the moment of truth – the most important presidential election in our lifetime. Sure, they seem to say that about every election, but in this case, it’s probably true, given that democracy itself is seemingly hanging in the balance. Whether or not the results actually end up confirming the country’s slide into totalitarianism, it’s a big deal regardless.
Need to prepare yourself? These movies should help put things in perspective. Not all of them are about presidential politics per se, but they are focused on the democratic process and the machinations and maneuverings that accompany it. We’d like to say they’ll calm your inevitably frazzled nerves, but the truth is, if you’re making a movie about an election in the United States, it’s probably lined with a good bit of cynicism. But as you’ll see, cynicism can be a good thing, especially if you’re hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
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1. All the President’s Men (1976)
Ah, the days when committing crimes could actually bring down a presidency. Watergate was barely out of the headlines when Alan Pakula turned the most famous act of reportage in American political history into the greatest journalism procedural ever made. Embellishing little, Pakula sticks to the facts – and to the newsroom of The Washington Post – and trusts that watching two professionals working at the highest level can be as riveting as any spy thriller. He was right.
2. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The ‘60s had just begun when John Frankenheimer’s mind-warping thriller managed to capture the paranoia and disaffection that would take root by decade’s end. During the Korean War, the son of a powerful political family (Laurence Harvey) is captured and brainwashed by communist terrorists into killing an American presidential candidate. It’s presented as a surreal nightmare, but following the Kennedy assassination, the film became harder to see, growing in cult status before its revival in the ‘80s solidified it as a full-fledged classic.
3. Wag the Dog (1997)
The Clinton years were a fertile era for biting political satire, perhaps none sharper – or more cynical – than Barry Levinson’s dark comedy about a spin doctor (Robert de Niro) and Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) ginning up a war with Albania to distract the public from a presidential sexcapade. A month after its release, the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, followed by the totally coincidental military bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. It was less life imitating art than art having keen knowledge of how the American political machine operates.
4. Primary Colors (1998)
A slick-talking hillbilly with an ambitious wife and chronic wandering eye makes an unlikely bid for the White House. Hm, sounds oddly familiar. The great Elaine May wrote this undisguised roman à clef about Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, with Mike Nichols directing and John Travolta standing in as Bubba-alike Jack Stanton. It flopped at the box office but stands as a clear-eyed view of an era (and politician) that’s become over-romanticised in the decades since.
5. The Candidate (1972)
Robert Redford’s mid-1970s output reads like the agenda for a particularly spicy New York Times news meeting, with All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor giving enduring voice to a moment of post-Watergate paranoia. But before either of those – and Watergate – Hollywood’s golden boy was putting his tousled, all-American persona to good use in a satire on the intrinsic hollowness of the election process. It came just ahead of Richard Nixon’s crushing but mood-souring election win over George McGovern, and, written by Eugene J. McCarthy speechwriter Jeremy Larner, it understands something that remains true about the stump: style always wins over substance.
6. The Best Man (1964)
Two political rivals (Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson) vying for their party’s nomination each come across information that could torpedo the other, and struggle over whether or not to deploy it. Ethical quandaries? In politics? Get out of here! Written by Gore Vidal, who adapted his own play, the film is hardly idealistic, but it presents a complex view of its lead characters, portraying them less as duplicitous snakes than flawed humans caught in a system that rewards amorality.
7. Bob Roberts (1992)
A wealthy populist decides to get into politics, winning support by appealing to the basest beliefs of the conservative electorate. Gee, where have we heard that before? It’s not an exact Trump analogue – in lieu of social media, the titular senate candidate disseminates his rhetoric via folk songs – but it’s close enough that in 2018, writer, director and star Tim Robbins lamented, ‘Bob Roberts came true’. The movie continues to prove prescient: after a gunman took a shot at Trump in July, many drew parallels to the staged assassination attempt depicted in the film. Robbins denounced the conspiracy theories as ‘deranged’, but can you really blame them?
8. Bulworth (1998)
Could a movie about a white senator who reinvigorates his career by appropriating unfiltered talking points from the Black community get made today? Would anyone want to make it? Warren Beatty’s self-directed comic satire walked a tightrope back in the ‘90s, but it remains a sharp needling of the ways race and class are addressed in American politics – even if the scenes of Beatty rapping and dressing ‘hood’ are pretty cringey in retrospect.
9. Long Shot (2019)
Sure, the idea of a schlubby journalist who looks like Seth Rogen romancing a driven Secretary of State who looks like Charlize Theron is an Apatowian fantasy. But the notion that a female presidential candidate would need lessons in ‘lightening up’ to seem viable is definitely not far-fetched. And about the first part: Rogen and Theron have enough odd-couple chemistry to make the contrivance semi-plausible. Or maybe that’s just the MDMA talking.
10. The Ides of March (2011)
‘Nothing bad happens when you’re doing the right thing.’ You know that the idealistic credo of Ryan Gosling’s Washington operative, Stephen Meyers, isn’t going to survive contact with the light – okay, dark – of election campaigning in George Clooney’s forensic dissection of a broken D.C. system. And so it quickly proves. Clooney, who adapts a Beau Willimon play, is the smooth Democrat governor that Meyers is helping run for office. But the young turk gets his head turned by ego and ambition, and is soon as deep in the swamp as the rest of his hard-bitten peers. If you already find American politics hopelessly cynical, this tense political thriller will not change your mind.