Truth and consequences
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- May
- 23
Truth is stranger than fiction — except, of course, when fiction is stranger than truth.
The recent season finale of NBC’s “Law & Order” offered viewers a terrific riff on the Eliot Spitzer scandal. A fictitious New York governor — younger and better-looking than Spitzer, for this is TV, people — found himself involved in a prostitution ring, which made him the only credible witness in identifying a certain murder suspect. The Machiavellian resolution — in which the powerful got what they wanted while the powerless and justice were denied – suggested that “L&W” exec-producer Dick Wolf is more clever than Spitzer ever was.
On the other hand, HBO’s “Recount” (9 p.m. Sunday) pulls no punches: It’s a straightforward recount of the quagmire that was the 2000 presidential election.Even though you know the outcome, this telefilm is so compellingly constructed that you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat. You’ll probably also have a queasy sense of déjà vu. The butterfly ballots. The hanging chad. (It turns out that the plural of chad is — wait for it — chad.) The lawsuits. The counter-suits. And, last but never least in an election year, Florida, Florida, Florida.
The Dems have already complained about their portrayal as wimps in the standoff with the Repubs. But let’s face it, the Democrats have generally been considered to be softer than the Republicans since at least the 1950s. Not saying it’s a fair perception. Just saying it’s surprisingly current, which is no doubt why Barack Obama is often on offense against John McCain.
Surely, there’s nothing spineless about Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary and Ed Begley Jr. as the Al Gore point men, passionately leading the Democratic charge. But they’re outdone by Tom Wilkinson’s James Baker, their wily chief Republican adversary. (Wilkinson is fast becoming the go-to Brit to play American leaders. He was a spot-on Benjamin Franklin in HBO’s “John Adams.”)
Baker had to be crafty and tough: The Republican team included Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris, who rather grandly — and, of course, completely mistakenly — cast herself as an American Cleopatra in the election crisis. In “Recount,” she’s given a merciless though undeniably funny caricature by an all-but-unrecognizable Laura Dern.
Nonetheless, the movie is even-handed in telling a complex tale and accepting of its outcome. It ends on a note of respect with the Spacey and Wilkinson characters shaking hands.
They may be blue state-red state. But “Recount” reminds us that we’re all part of one map.
This entry was posted
on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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