My favorite political movies: a null set?

While almost any movie can be read as having a political agenda or subtext or aura, movies which take the world of politics as a primary focus are relatively few and far between, and good ones are even rarer. In an obligatory nod to the day, I tried to come up with a list of my favorite political films, but failed to come up with much of anything.

Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is usually mentioned in lists such as these, but as much as I like Capra and James Stewart, I can't warm up to this overdone bucket of sweat and sentiment. I guess I admire Stewart's gutsy filibuster turn, but I don't quite buy it. This feels like a dry run for Capra's later Meet John Doe, a better film though still not one for a top 10 list. All the President's Men is another one that everyone likes, and I guess I do, too, but I haven't seen it since its theatrical run 120 years ago, so I don't remember enough specifics (except that Redford, above, was dashing, of course) to talk meaningfully about it.

Some people pick films like The Manchurian Candidate or Being There as political films, and while they both have explicit political content, to me they're both "fantasies" with political undertones. Feel free to disabuse me of this idea, because I like both films (I love Being There) and would put them on a Top 10 Political Films list if I felt more solid about the "political" part.

There are some "good" movies that could be put on a "political" list, such as JFK, Advise and Consent, The Best Man, All the King's Men, The Conformist, and Bob Roberts, and there are many by non-American filmmakers (Costa-Gravas' Z and Missing, Bertolucci's The Conformist and The Spider's Stratagem, Visconti's Senso and The Leopard). But most of those (especially Advise and Consent and All the King's Men--the original; haven't seen the remake) aren't exhilirating or entertaining enough to watch more than once.

That leaves, for me, three satires, two sharp and cutting and one soft and sweet. Dr. Strangelove is one of the best satires ever, mocking Cold War thinking and the "mutual destruction" military mindset of the time. Some satires are funny and make good points, but aren't necessarily good "art," but every aspect of this one, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is primo, from the various photographic styles to the superb acting all around, especially from Peter Sellers (above) and George C. Scott. Wag the Dog is very funny, if lesser art; we happened to see this tale of a government that conjures up a fake war to divert the public's attention from a Presidential sex scandal right around the time that the Clinton administration was conjuring up an international incident to divert attention from the Lewinsky unpleasantness, so the effect of the movie was startling. Dustin Hoffman gives one of his best performances here.

The last movie is Dave, the cute Capraesque film in which Kevin Kline, a look-alike for the President, is pressed into service as, well, a look-alike when the real President is felled by a stroke. The President is a jerk, but Dave is a sweet guy, and the President's wife (Sigourney Weaver) falls in love with him. It's no more realistic than any 30's screwball comedy, so the satire is not especially effective, but it's a sweet movie with several good performers, including Laura Linney in a small, early role. Now that I look back, the best political entertainment of all, aside from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, is probably the TV series The West Wing. Martin Sheen is undoubtedly the best president we never had.