Vidal's writing is sharp and perceptive. In a key scene, Henry Fonda, as William Russell, a former Secretary of State, confronts Cliff Robertson as Joe Cantwell, a sitting U.S. senator. Both want to be their party's nominee for president.
Cliff Robertson: "I don't understand you."
Henry Fonda: "I know you don't. Because you have no sense of responsibility toward anybody or anything. And that is a tragedy in a man, and it is a disaster in a president."
This exchange captures a division in American political dynamics which has become greatly solidified in the decade from 2008 and 2018.
The New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, offers his analysis as to what has helped lead this nation to its current solidification of right versus left, a division far more severe than it was when the film appeared in 1964.
Comparing the Nixon and Trump eras as evidence mounted against each, in his Monday column, Charles M. Blow writes:
"When the evidence of wrongdoing was clear and incontrovertible [against Nixon], people began to peel away, tails tucked and full of shame.
"But that was a different time, one in which media wasn't so fractured and partisan, before the advent of social media and our current dissociable mentalities.
"Nixon had no propaganda arm. Trump has one. It's called Fox News. There is little daylight between the network's programming and the White House's priorities. If Trump goes down, so too does Fox, in some measure.
"So the network has a vested interest in defending Trump until the bitter end, and that narrative-crafting could impede an otherwise natural and normal disaffection with Trump."
Movies are created to relate to viewers. Film-makers reflect the culture they wish to reach. Audiences are shaped by their culture. Currently, our culture is divided between right and left to such a degree that each side protects its turf to a degree rarely seen in our history.
Major news outlets and social media have divided us and enhanced that turf loyalty.
This current harsh reality only enhances my 2008 choice for what is for me the best film about American politics ever made, John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
A word about the plot and the film's setting, told briefly:
The two stars of that 1962 release are John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. At the center of the film is the conflict between the traditional story of the early American west, where the white invaders often confronted one another in gun fights in places like the OK Corral.
Liberty Valance (in an over the top performance by Lee Marvin) is the embodiment of absolute evil, a killer who uses fear as an instrument of control.
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