UPDATE: Due to coronavirus restrictions, cinemas in Los Angeles closed in March and still are shut. Rules of the Political Film Society only allow review of films exhibited in LA Country for at least a week. However, films are now being shown on drive-in theaters in outlying areas. Most of the dozen exhibited that way have been of little political significance until finally one emerged:
IRRESTIBLE PROVES THAT POLITICS IS ABOUT MONEY
Jon Stewart of Comedy Central fame, in deciding to make a film to provoke the elitist Democratic Party, focused on a fictional small town in Wisconsin in Irresistible, though the letters RESIST stand out on the screen. Filming was actually in Rockmart, Georgia, and the story was inspired by the costliest House election in American history—a 2017 special election for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, composed of some affluent suburbs north of Atlanta. After a lot of unnecessary campaign documentary footage and a scene on Election Night 2016 in the beginning, center stage is occupied by Colonel Jack Hastings (played by Chris Cooper), a retired Marine, who is giving a piece of his mind at a Deerlaken City Council meeting over a new requirement that immigrants must show IDs. While the speech is replayed at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC, Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell) has a bright idea: Why not have the DNC support Hastings in a race for mayor as a Democrat, thereby showing that the Democratic Party cares about the heartland? He then flies to Wisconsin, drives to the town, and meets Hastings. At this point what is obvious is that the stereotypic culture of a farming community is quite alien to Big City Zimmer, who clumsily tries to fit in. Although Zimmer’s crude pitch to Hastings is initially rejected, he later agrees, though Zimmer never asks him why he has changed his mind. Grist for Zimmer’s Democratic mill, Hastings indicates that the town needs improvement because there are only 5,000 residents now, down from 15,000 a few years ago, and the town’s high school may have to close. Then Zimmer organizes Hastings’s family and friends to serve as a campaign staff and accompanies Hastings to the Upper East Side of New York to secure funding. Zimmer then imports DNC experts to make the campaign highly professional, including a Superpac to which supporters contribute thousands. Not to be outsmarted, the Republican Party dispatches Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne) to run an equally polished campaign for incumbent Mayor Braun (Brent Sexton). A pedestrian campaign ensues, with mistakes made by outsiders working for Hastings. One is to claim that Hastings favors government-funded abortion, provoking nuns in town to object. Another is a call for more diversity in the campaign staff though the town seems 100 percent White. Nevertheless, polling shows that Hastings gains increasing support, and the election result is mysteriously a tie. Then come the surprises, showing that Hastings and the Deerlaken townspeople are much smarter than Zimmer imagined. Although reviewers are of course not supposed to reveal fascinating endings, a clue must be reported: In an interview as credits role, someone reports that the Federal Election Commission cannot rule on campaign finance violations because Trump has fired holdovers from the Obama administrations and has refused to nominate any replacements. The Political Film Society has nominated Irresistible as best film promoting democracy of 2020.