Jeremy’s Tophunder №99: The Ides of March

7 min readJun 25, 2020

There are two Oval Office-based TV shows that have been popular and successful over the last 20 years, and the two of them take diametrically opposed viewpoints on American politics.

The West Wing (from 1999–2006) had an unabashedly positive view of the American political system, portraying all of the players as well-intentioned Patriots, and while they might not always be on the “winning” side, the White House staffers always seem to have the moral high ground. It’s incredibly entertaining, but it’s just that — entertainment. The idealism portrayed on the show borders on absurd and just can’t be taken seriously after a while.

On the other end of the spectrum is House of Cards (from 2013–2018), which takes a jarringly cynical look at politics, in which sitting politicians commit murder and their only goals seem to be in accruing power, holding onto it, and wielding it for their own personal gain. The political players are almost universally seen as ruthless, manipulative pragmatists who will betray anyone in their pursuit of power.

The Ides of March takes a viewpoint that is closer to the center, but it certainly leans heavily towards the end where House of Cards lies. Perhaps this makes sense, as The Ides of March started as a play called Farragut North, written by Beau Willimon, who would go on to create House of Cards several years later.

All of the players in The Ides of March are motivated by one thing — winning. They’re willing to sell each other out and stab each other in the back to get what they want, but they don’t go quite to the extremes that the characters in House of Cards do. It has a foundation that vaguely seems like reality, where there’s some balance between doing what it takes to win but also having some principles to fall back on. House of Cards is clearly ridiculous, as is The West Wing. The Ides of March may well be ridiculous also, but to me at least, it feels like a sequence of events that could happen in a Presidential primary campaign.

It’s rather telling that Willimon spent most of his 20s working on political campaigns. He worked on Senate campaigns for Chuck Schumer, Bill Bradley, and Hillary Clinton, and worked on Howard Dean’s 2004 Presidential campaign. He’s clearly drawing on some real-world experience, and he’s using it to construct a very dark, very cynical look at American politics. We can assume that either Willimon got very jaded very quickly, or that maybe politics really is this brutal. Or maybe both.

The strength of The Ides of March lies in its cast. It’s an absolutely loaded group. George Clooney plays a Governor running for President, helped along by his two top aides, played by Ryan Gosling and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Paul Giamatti plays the campaign manager for Clooney’s opponent, Marisa Tomei plays a New York Times reporter, and Jeffrey Wright plays a Democratic Senator looking to trade his endorsement for a cabinet post or the Vice Presidency. Rounding out the cast is Evan Rachel Wood as an intern on the campaign and daughter of the DNC Chairman, and Max Minghella as another high-level aide on Clooney’s staff. Those are really the only characters of any consequence, and they’re all played by incredibly talented actors. There really aren’t any duds. It’s on the short list of best-acted movies in my Tophunder, led by Gosling, Wood (probably her best performance), and obviously, Hoffman and Giamatti, who have never been anything short of spectacular.

The movie was directed by George Clooney as well, during that window of time where Clooney was actually a good director. It’s kind of interesting — he directed Good Night and Good Luck, which was great (and he was nominated for an Oscar for it), and I thought he did a really good job with this movie as well, but since 2011, he’s directed two movies that were both pretty bad despite great casts (The Monuments Men) and great screenwriters (Suburbicon). But I thought his work here was great. I would compare it to Rob Reiner’s work with A Few Good Men. It’s a loaded cast working from a great script — sometimes the best thing a director can do is just point the cameras and let the movie direct itself. Clooney put in a few more flourishes than Reiner did, but for the most part, it seemed like a hands-off style of direction, which really played well.

The most interesting conflict in the movie isn’t between characters, but between ideas. Clooney, the candidate, has a number of pie-in-the-sky campaign ideas, like an initiative to eliminate the internal combustion engine within 10 years and move to fully electric cars, or the notion that the electorate would support a candidate that avoids claiming any religious affiliation. But Clooney, the man (in this case, Mike Morris), seems much more calculating than that. He tells his staffers that he’s not interested in the back-room deals that they’re suggesting, even when they tell him that it would lock up the nomination, but he’s perfectly willing to engage in those same back-room deals to avoid a scandal that would end the campaign. Idealism’s battle with pragmatism is the central conflict of the movie, and it filters its way into just about every character and every relationship. Ryan Gosling also starts the movie as a wide-eyed idealist, but quickly has that dream shattered and has to claw his way back into the game. It seems like everybody is trying to play by the rules and operate in good faith, but when push comes to shove, everyone eventually rolls around in the mud.

Generally, I think politics is a topic better covered by TV than movies. A TV series can better capture the ongoing swings and shifts of a campaign or a term in office than a movie can in just two hours. The Ides of March runs just 101 minutes, and while it’s able to get through the story at a measured pace that never feels rushed, I do wish I could see some of the elements explored with some more depth. I think it’s pretty cool that scale of the movie is so focused — everything takes place over the course of just a few days leading up to the Democratic primary in just one state — but the movie is able to sell the idea that these few days very well could determine who the next President is.

We got two great political TV shows, but both of them certainly shifted their way to the extremes (intentionally or not) over the course of their run. I enjoyed House of Cards for a bit, but it eventually just got too dark, for seemingly no good reason. In retrospect, I’m kind of glad that we have The Ides of March. Willimon is clearly a very talented writer, and The Ides of March gives us a glimpse into his mind that wasn’t able to go too far afield, because there just wasn’t quite enough time. It’s by no means the best take on American politics ever put on film, but it’s one that I enjoy enough to just barely sneak into my list.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

3. The Social Network

4. Dazed and Confused

5. The Shawshank Redemption

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

8. The Departed

9. Saving Private Ryan