Primary Colors

Cast:

Jack Stanton - John Travolta
Susan Stanton - Emma Thompson
Richard Jemmons - Billy Bob Thornton
Libby Holden - Kathy Bates
Henry Burton - Adrian Lester

Director: Mike Nichols

Chalk another one up to my "first impressions can be wrong" line of thinking. When Primary Colors came out, I had no desire to see it. It had John Travolta, who I can take or leave, mostly leave, and mirrored the current news scandals too closely. I have had about enough of those, hence my apprehension and delay in seeing this. What I got was a pleasant, unexpected surprise of a movie. A thoughtful, entertaining, borderline satirical lambasting of politics today. Credit to Mike Nichols and Elaine May for making politics watchable for 2 hours.

Primary Colors disproves one of my sticking points about movies, that plot does matter. This delicate recipe involves certain steps, which must be followed to achieve success. First, you must have a series of situations, held together by, and sensibly following along, a common theme. Mix in some intelligent dialogue, smart characters, and some current topical relevance, and you have the magic that is this movie.

The storyline follows the presidential aspirations of a Southern governor, always caught amidst scandals, as told through the eyes of an aide. The aide is struggling to make moral sense of the candidate’s actions, while also being forced to look at himself and his reaction to these decisions. The similarities to real life are completely intended, as this is based on the book of the same name written by Anonymous (later revealed to Washington Post reported Joe Kleine) You can feel some sense of associating and understanding what is occurring here. It is amazing, Travolta really does look like Clinton. After a while, I forgot who I was watching, and sat back in the joy of what I was seeing. Emma Thompson, as the put-upon wife, and Adrian Lester, as the aide and narrator, give heartfelt emotional performances. However, the shining star here is Kathy Bates, again proving why she’s one of the best actresses working today (The Waterboy?? Did you really need the money that badly?) Her portrayal of a dirt-digging campaign assistant provides both comic relief and brutal honesty. This is another compelling study of characters. These are real people, smart people, reacting the way that non-movie people would when presented with these situations.

This movie is smart, without ever being preachy. It takes controversial issues and never really tries to sway you one way or another, but rather present the situations to you, and let you figure out how you'd deal with them. This would be a nice coupling with Wag The Dog on Reality in DC 101. It never really bogs down in political jargon though. It is easy to follow, as well as understand and never gets too caught up in it’s own rhetoric. Instead, it does a masterful job of bringing politics to a level that most of us lay people can comprehend. You are required to think a bit, but about how you would deal with the moral issues presented here. However, if you open your brain up a bit, and let this movie in to rattle around your head, it is well worth it. It’s just so refreshing to see smart movies that let the reality and intensity of situations stir emotions, rather than having them blatantly toyed with. I rented this one on video, but I would not have had any qualms about a theater. It’s a strong achievement of bonding between DC and Hollywood, showing that these two polar opposites really aren’t that far apart. ($$$ of $$$$)

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