WHY ARE POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS SO ROUGH?OUR BRAND IS CRISIS TELLS WHY
Based on the 2002 election in Bolivia of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada de Bustamante, which was first covered as a documentary with the same title in 2005, Our Brand of Crisis so loosely recreates that election that there is no “Based on True Facts” title at the beginning of the film. In the Bolivian election, Sánchez hired an American political consulting firm, Greenberg Carville Shrum, to help defeat democratic socialist Evo Morales. Sánchez had been president in 1993-1997 and wanted to make a comeback. But in Our Brand Is Crisis, the names are changed, with Pedro Castillo (played by Joaquim de Almeida) as the one seeking to return to office who is so far behind in the polls that he could pass for Governor Chris Christie in today’s Republican primary contest. He hires a campaign team that is unable to vault his candidacy anywhere near his opponent, Victor Rivera (Luis Arcella), so they beg longtime strategist “Calamity” Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) to outdo their opponent’s key adviser, Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton). As the film develops, the rivalry between the candidates seems less interesting than the one between Bodine and Candy, who have a bitter rivalry going back decades. On arrival in Bolivia, where much of the film is made, Bodine realizes that Castillo can only win by turning the narrative against him (that he is arrogant, a lackey of Wall Street, etc.) upside down: His campaign asserts that Bolivia is in crisis, so only an experienced leader can save the country, not his amateurish opponent. Dirty tricks then abound, Castillo becomes a “new man” (shades of the New Nixon) faking humility, and lies his way to victory. Film commentators in Hollywood are unsure whether director David Gordon Green intended the film to be a comedy or a satire, but political scientists will view the campaign as an entirely realistic portrayal reminiscent of Wag the Dog (1997) until Bodine has an epiphany at the end.
But was there an even more interesting plot? In 2003, after Sánchez was re-elected, he was charged with responsibility for a massacre of 67 protesters after he privatized the country’s natural gas industry. In the film, reference is made to that massacre as a legacy of Sánchez’s first term, not his second term. Moreover, the protest, which in the film occurs on the day when Castillo takes office, actually caused Sánchez to resign in 2003 and flee to the United States, whereupon Evo Morales, his opponent in 2002, was elected. In 2008, relatives of those massacred filed suit in Bolivia to prosecute Sánchez for extrajudicial killings, so an extradition order was sought. But in 2012, the administration of Barack Obama blocked the extradition, in effect giving him asylum, even though the case is still tied up in court. Our Brand Is Crisis might have revealed that human rights issue, but the film director or writer (or producer George Clooney) chickened out on that opportunity. MH