Count on the Left to supply the puppets.
Posted on 04/12/2005 5:58:51 AM PDT by OESY
Karl Rove - The Architect," a documentary on PBS tonight, spins a story of astounding stupidity out of a career it insists is among the most influential in American politics. This is unpardonable. To hint at so much intrigue without dramatizing any of it - by hardly offering evidence - is a dereliction of duty; it suggests that even the most tendentious account of Mr. Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, as a redeemer or a rascal might have done his story greater justice.
In harmony with dark synthesizer chords, the narrator speaks in haunted tones about Mr. Rove's "40-year plan to remake the American political landscape." (Mr. Rove is 54.) Talking heads confirm that "Karl Rove wants a permanent Republican majority," "His hand was in all of it," and - more scare chords - "He's the god inside the machine."
He sure sounds terrifying. And indeed, we do learn (shield the kids) that Mr. Rove, from an early age, was a Republican. He liked politics. And he worked to get Republicans elected.
Really, it's chilling.
Pervaded by interviews with reporters from The Washington Post, which joins "Frontline" in presenting the documentary, the program takes its title from Mr. Bush's 2004 victory speech, in which he thanked various advisers, including "the architect, Karl Rove." This workaday figure of speech is treated as an all-revealing slip of the tongue, and the movie goes into overdrive trying to make architecture seem sinister.
Here things get especially comical. Ham-handed still lifes of an architect's paraphernalia - including blueprints, compasses, graph paper - appear as a metonym for the title character. These arrangements are an embarrassment to documentary filmmaking.
The most amateurish among them features a crucifix and a photograph of Mr. Bush on top of a red-brown book, embossed with the words "Holy Bible." Nearby, in the upper right-hand corner of the frame, has been placed a photo of Al Gore, looking chagrined. In the left-hard corner is the scene's sole black and white image: Karl Rove, looking into the middle distance. All this stuff sits atop blueprints. Someone has got to be kidding.
Visual and auditory tricks - this pile-on of scattershot symbolism - are presumably meant to distract from shortcomings in the program's storytelling. In the one and only dramatic sequence, the film stoops to building suspense around the exit-poll snafus in the 2004 presidential election. That those polls erroneously projected John Kerry as the winner may have bugged reporters for a few impatient hours in November, but those glitches amount to almost nothing now - a short, illusory setback for Mr. Rove, who trusted his own favorable data anyway.
Nonetheless, the program dwells on images of Mr. Bush and his family at the polls in Crawford, Tex. The first family looks nervous, we're told: concerned, funereal. (They look like people going to vote.) But Mr. Rove, on the same day, reveals an antic disposition; he hams up a cellphone call with Ed Gillespie, then the Republican Party chairman, and appears confident. The source of Mr. Rove's striking, clownish style is never revealed. (He's also shown dancing around in snow, apparently while campaigning in New England.) Friends tell the camera, instead, that Mr. Rove was always driven and loved to read.
Wayne Slater, a writer for The Dallas Morning News and the co-author of "Bush's Brain," a biography of Mr. Rove, tells one "story" about the strategist as a young man. It's this: As a boy, Mr. Rove had a poster in his room that said, "Wake Up, America."
This is not a story.
Without a narrative, the program turns to haphazard assertions to illuminate the character of Mr. Rove, but even this is mostly speculation or trivia. He grew up "a non-Mormon in the heart of Mormon country," we're told. (What was his religious heritage, then?) Barry Goldwater's campaign - "extremism in defense of liberty," etc. - apparently excited him. And Dan Rather, then the White House correspondent for CBS, gave Mr. Rove his primetime break when he conducted a short interview with him during Richard Nixon's campaign for re-election in 1972.
The Washington Post's Dan Balz, who comes off as the most perceptive reporter on camera here, does present Mr. Rove as a glutton for data: "He loves to be inundated by information." Helpfully, he also explains Mr. Rove's evidently lifelong project of realigning the electorate as incremental, comparing it to the approach of Woody Hayes's old Ohio State football teams: "three yards and a cloud of dust." As career analysis, this is the best the movie has to offer.
These shards are not nearly enough to justify the grandiosity of the narration and the melodramatic mise-en-scène. Only real drama - scenes, in war rooms, of people planning and strategizing - could do that. The story of a plotter that has no plot: it just isn't right.
Wow..that Heffernan is some writer. She had a sarcastic dig in practically sentence. I loved it!
yeah,...Time Capsule , in the folder marked USELESS/TIMEWASTERS , and to think we're paying for this
They don't disagree with the premise - that Rove is the personification of pure distilled evil. They just think it's too hamfisted and crude. It doesn't call Rove Satan with enough subtlety to suit their tastes.
Why we continue to pay for this crap from PBS is beyond me. The NYT? I don't have to buy it and don't.
I liked it, too, and I'm wondering about the kneejerk commentary from some who evidently saw "New York Times" and went into auto-bash mode without reading the piece, or if they did, not getting it.
One of my favorite excerpts:
He sure sounds terrifying. And indeed, we do learn (shield the kids) that Mr. Rove, from an early age, was a Republican. He liked politics. And he worked to get Republicans elected.
Really, it's chilling.
LOL
Actually, she does appear to disagree with the premise.
Ouch!!
OK, well you can't win them all. I suggest this review is an anomaly, but I might be wrong. I hope everyone watches tonight and lets me know.
I was the Video Editor, and this has been one of the most extreme editing assignments of my career. It is really quite tricky to structure the political biography of Karl Rove inside a historical chronology of the republican party - since Goldwater. Even more tricky when the opening and closing scenes of the documentary are voting day 2004.
I hope you all enjoy the film.
No wonder she can use "mise-en-scene" in a sentence.
'Frontline: Karl Rove - The Architect'
PBS, tonight at 9, check local listings.
That PeeBS attacks on Rove, Bush and true republicans in general was worse than the PeeBS attacks on the US's worst enemies, Saddam, Kadaffy, Khomenei, etc. Of course, libs love America's enemies and enemies of freedom, so it only fits.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.