Director Armando Iannucci
IN THE LOOP B+
Great Britain (106
mi) 2009 d: Armando Iannucci
“Fuck off, Frodo.” —Lt. General George Miller (James Gandolfini)
Given a sense from someone who’s been writing TV shows all
his life, this first feature film is no different, as it has the feel of a free-wheeling,
expletive-driven cable TV show, fueled by plenty of nonstop profanity that explode
like bombs in and around the rooms of government with such frequency they may
as well be heat-seeking missiles.
Without ever mentioning names, this adrenaline-laced political farce
resembles the behind-the-scenes shenanigans in the Bush White House leading up
to the Iraqi invasion, as no one wants to go on record as talking about an
impending war, so they disguise every word they use with subterfuge, denying
anything remotely resembling the truth while inventing theories or spreading
false rumors to send reporters scurrying in the wrong direction. Based on a British TV show The Thick of It, which uses a similar (the
most foul-mouthed) main character and has been running since 2005, this film
mixes the bumbling political operatives working on both sides of the ocean,
both the British and the Americans, each more dysfunctional than the next. Starting with Tom Hollander as Simon Foster, British
Minister for International Development, a low level bureaucrat who doesn’t
stand for anything, who’s always on the verge of standing for something, but
when the cameras are rolling has a tendency to offer delectable sound bites
that instantly pique the interest of the opposite shores. When asked during a live BBC broadcast about
impending war in the Middle East, Foster blurts out “war is unforeseeable,” a
seemingly innocuous phrase that is immediately seized upon as a break from the
Prime Minister’s views, where attack dog Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi, from
the TV show), communications director from the Prime Minister’s office, hurls
the first of his series of neverending invectives to shut him up, as well as
anyone else that stands in his way. Tucker’s
character is easily the most hilarious, as in typical John Cleese fashion, he
never tires of inventing the most personalized profanity-laden insults ever
hurled. The phrase has already captured
the attention of a liberal American cabinet assistant Karen Clarke (Mimi
Kennedy) and her bright assistant, Anna Chlumsky, who actually authored a paper
outlining the pros and cons of going to war, heavier on the reasons to avoid
invasion. A political firestorm
ensues.
Foster, however, after getting thoroughly chewed out, in an
attempt to backtrack and sound completely ambiguous, utters the phrase “Britain
must be ready to climb the mountain of conflict,” which puts him at the center
of the conflict and gets him an invite to a Congressional committee hearing
room led by the Rumsfeld-like warmonger David Rasche playing state department
secretary Linton Barwick, whose first order of business after the meeting is
over is to officially change the notes from what was actually said to what he
felt they intended to say. Added into
the mix is James Gandolfini as a Colin Powell-esque Lt. General Miller, who is adamantly
against war, claiming: ”Once you’ve been
there, once you’ve seen it, you never want to go back unless you have to—like
France,” using his intelligence sources just to find where the meeting was
held, as it was disguised under a fictitious name. Gandolfini can hurl the invectives as good as
the next guy, so for awhile this feels like a testosterone heavy profanity
contest, creating an entirely new language spoken behind closed doors in the
halls of government. While it is
outrageously funny, the tone moves from manic to screwball comedy to farce, the
one-liner zingers are uttered fast and furiously, where after awhile you reach
a saturation point as it all starts to sound the same. While there’s little actual politics in
evidence, or any real discussion, instead everything takes place behind the
scenes in an attempt to undermine, outmaneuver, or even annihilate the
opposition, as it’s all about being top dog, forcing others to be subservient
to you. This is the role Barwick cherishes,
even as he has no qualms using fabricated intelligence, which, for sheer
idiocy, turns out to be a rewritten hack job of Chlumsky’s paper now advocating
going to war, claiming this is classified British intelligence. This film exposes the lunacy of this kind of
secrecy and backstabbing, where they’re so busy falsifying evidence and
bullying the opposition that the world of deceit and power is all they
understand, not the one the rest of us live in.
While this is obviously a satirical spoof, where the
frenetic pace of the film is a nonstop charade of getting the jump on the next
guy, continuously feeding others a pile of lies and misdirection, it’s also uttering
only meaningless phrases on camera while maintaining an undetected secret
agenda behind the scenes, spending one’s entire career mastering deceit, having
no interest whatsoever in one’s constituency, as real people may not like what
you’re doing. Instead, this accurately
describes how people invent the kind of world they live in, building a simulated
parallel universe, one that is acceptable to the TV public, while behind the
scenes fucking over anyone that gets in their way. This film specializes in those close up,
behind the scene moments, which are a rare glimpse at just how vulgar our
leaders can be, as they likely got to where they are by being better at
intimidating and browbeating others. In
the world of government, it’s all about who can threaten others successfully
and get away with it, or who’s the biggest bully on the block. Showing tenacious insight into comic
material, where the key is the relentless use of ever more colorful profanity,
there is a myriad of characters that collectively become a combustible force,
as there’s something more powerful here than any of us realize. That’s the part that doesn’t get written
about, or examined, or subject to investigative scrutiny, and that’s the raw
verbiage of high-powered political operators as they try to outscheme their
opponents “by any means necessary, ” a phrase popularized by Malcolm X and the
Black Panthers in the 1960’s. Never in
their wildest dreams did they think it would be the reactionary right wing law
and order advocates who would secretly usurp their methodology in advancing the
nation’s case for going to war.
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