Monday, November 7, 2022

The Candidate (1972)

Election Day is tomorrow here in the US, so since I had The Candidate sitting on my DVR since 31 Days of Oscar, I decided now would be a great time to watch it and do a post on it.

The movie starts off with a brief establishing scene that shows us professional political consultant Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) finishing up a campaign. It doesn't really matter where, or for what office. But with one election over, it's time for Marvin to find another candidate to back, and that's where the difficulty comes in. In California, Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter) is a popular Republican running for re-election. So popular, in fact, that none of the big-name Democrats want to run against him since there's not much chance of them winning.

With that in mind, Marvin approaches young Bill McKay (Robert Redford). Bill is decidedly on the side of the little guy, working for a legal aid society and having strong positions in favor of things that were big issues in the early 1970s, like integrative school busing, legalizing abortion, or a nascent environmental movement that in those days was reacting to things like Cleveland's Cuyahoga River catching fire. So he's the perfect sacrificial lamb for the Democrats. Moreover, he's got built-in name recognition, because his father John (Melvyn Douglas) was a very popular governor back in the day.

Bill accepts the challenge, but with the proviso that he gets to campaign on his issues as he sees fit, not as any handlers might want him to look to the public. And it's the sort of idea that works with young first-time voters, especially those politically active enough to make up a disproportionate amount of the electorate in a party primary. That, combined with the McKay name, is more than enough to help him win the primary and become the Democratic nominee.

But then the problems come. Early polling suggests not just that McKay is going to lose, but that he's going to lose by a big enough margin that it will humiliate him and harm the legal aid work that he'd go back to doing after a losing campaign. So Marvin and the rest of the handlers suggest that he start moderating, as well as making himself look more telegenic (as if young Robert Redford wasn't telegenic enough).

It works, as the polls begin to get tighter as election day approaches. But Bill still has a fairly stand-offish view of electoral politics, and especially the grind of having to run a statewide campaign. It doesn't help that he wanted his father to stay in the background, and that his wife Nancy (Karen Carlson) is having an affair. Nor does it help that Sen. Jarmon isn't exactly a bad guy, just one who disagrees on the issues. In fact, compared to 50 years on there's a surprisingly low amount of negative campaigning.

But it's an atmosphere that's actually to the movie's benefit. It's an intimate look at the behind-the-scenes world of politics, once you get away from the world of actually governing. Reford and Boyle both give fine performances, with Porter and Douglas also doing good jobs in their smaller roles as elders at different points in their political careers. It helps that the screenwriter and several other behind-the-camera people had worked on this sort of political campaign earlier in their careers; apparently several of the scenes in the movie are based on things that really happened in campaigns.

And, although the movie is definitely making some political statements, not just on what would now be called TEAM RED versus TEAM BLUE, but also on the whole idea of how to market political ideas, it does so in a fairly gentle way that I don't think is going to alienate anybody who has a differing political viewpoint.

Robert Redford will definitely be more remembered for movies other than The Candidate, but it's definitely a movie that shouldn't be missed.

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