The Ideas of March

At the movies this weekend, when the couple in front of me asked for two tickets to “The Ideas of March,” I realized something that should have been glaringly obvious: A lot of folks outside the Columbia bubble don’t know much about the Roman calendar. Roman astrologers called the ides the period from the 13th to the 15th of each month when certain planets were in alignment. It was the ides of March in 44 BC when Brutus and Cassius stabbed Caesar to death while dozens of senators looked on. The scene was immortalized in Shakespeare’s eponymous play when the soothsayer warns Caesar to “beware the ides of March.”

To put the Wiki-generated pedantry aside for a moment, the new George Clooney movie reminds us of the astrological event coming up in March 2012 AD. This one is sure to be more lunatic than lunar: The Ohio presidential primary. In that context, “The Ides of March” provides a fascinating look into the way that people think about politics.

Surely Clooney’s character, Mike Morris, composites square-jawed U.S. leaders of the past. His campaign slogan, “I like Mike,” could not be more Eisenhower-esque, nor could his fatal tryst with an intern better recall Bill Clinton. At the start of the film, Clooney’s Morris arrives as a knight in shining armor who promises to clean up modern politics. (Read: Barack.) Then it takes him about three scenes to impregnate Evan Rachel Wood. (Read: Edwards, Schwarzenegger, and anyone who’s said the words “family values” on public television.) In truth, Mike Morris is one camera-click away from Weiner-style selfies in his hotel room.

When Morris’s internal indiscretion is revealed, the audience finds itself shaken from the kind of honeymoon period it once had with President Obama. However, unlike what some predict about Obama, the post-honeymoon Clooney seems perfectly qualified to lead the country, the best and the only option on the table. By the end of the movie—and I won’t spoil it—the characters are rudely shaken from their naïveté, but not discouraged away from politics. Just the opposite. They thrive on the idea that they are in a sort of Cornelian drama where the most moral people are forced by their circumstances to act badly. The “political machine” operates like arsenic—it creeps into the water supply until we are acclimated enough to survive.

That was movie critic Christopher Orr’s chief complaint, in a nutshell. He wrote in The Atlantic, “From the film’s ideological vantage point, Democrats are Machiavellian devils, and Republicans are an inconceivable evil looming on a distant horizon, like the White Walkers in Game of Thrones.” I disagree—if politicians were portrayed as anything but the White Walkers, the movie would hardly be believable. There is a feedback loop between politics and representations of politics where the actions of Nixon, Kennedy, and Clinton are reflected onto film, then recycled into new behaviors. Obviously there are more factors in the process, but it’s hard not to see how movies like “The Ides” crystallize and then refract our notions of the political. In a world where our most idealistic president hires bankers to regulate the banks, Clooney’s characters seem too good to be true.

Even as they commit unnamable offenses, the characters in “The Ides of March” remain convinced that Morris’ intentions justify layers of blackmail and double-dealing. As a candidate, he hits all the main points: the earth, the war, the kids, the jobs, the debt, and that pernicious “top 1 percent.” Unlike Christopher Orr, I walked out of a movie replete with sex, corruption, and death, feeling like I’d seen “Bambi” in 3D. His chiseled jaw-line aside, Clooney’s platform seemed saccharine, ingenuous. Even a morsel of earnestness is hard to swallow, whereas the inverse—gutted social programs, millions without healthcare, tax cuts for the wealthy—feels all too real.

Which brings me back to ancient Rome and the original ides of March. Now, it’s like some invisible central committee has banned political earnestness. Tropes like the one in the movie are all too common—the fate of the fresh-faced politico who thinks he can clean up the game is flatly predetermined. For that matter, so is Caesar’s. He is the tragic prototype of the great ruler who pushes the limit of hubris and gains so much power that his underlings plot against him.

But there is one part of the story that many people forget, a perspective that claims some historical validity: that Brutus and Cassius loved Caesar even as they murdered him in the interest of the Roman state. In spite of their skeletons in the closet, Morris and his advisers seem to promise the right things for America. In the world of film, if we can believe in a leader whose reputation has been a bit tarnished, maybe we can in life.

A good movie though—you should go see it.

Amanda Gutterman is a Columbia College junior majoring in English. The Far Side of the Familiar runs alternate Wednesdays.