On Weiner and Documenting Deplorable
It’s understandable to think the superb personal-political documentary, Weiner, would take its title from its subject, disgraced Democratic wonder boy and prolific dic pic-er, Anthony Weiner.
Understandable, but misleading.
Actually it’s called Weiner because it takes you inside the political abattoir.
Step inside and see the sausage made, the soulless butcher toiling away in the slaughterhouse, hacking and chopping and sawing and disarticulating decency at the joints with aplomb and whistling, strutting indifference.
Make mincemeat of whatever remaining morsel of faith you have in politicians.
Have a wiener, will you, uncooked and oozing blood with every bite.
Prepare to puke, in other words.
Anthony Weiner, once a ferocious bulldog for the middle class, of foaming-at-the-mouth oratory lore, is the most unctuously ingratiating, sleaze excreting human being to ever abuse the title of public servant.
He wears his laughably affected charisma like Donald Trump’s tan, and is equally unlikable for it.
His inexhaustible pandering makes for amateur-hour, cringingly overwrought theater.
It’s embarrassing and he is pitiful while managing to be completely unsympathetic from beginning to end.
He is excruciating.
Long ago, who knows when exactly, Weiner hollowed himself out and replaced whatever it is that makes one appreciably human with the plastic and silicone of a political mannequin, albeit one that is vigorously animated by what I can only surmise must be the dark life-force endowed by Faustian bargain.
His rank arrogance and smug self-righteousness betray the inner workings of a man who believes he has earned the world’s unwavering adoration.
He has never heard of self-effacement or humility.
He is so audaciously sanctimonious as to hold himself out as tireless champion of the people who never wilts in the face of adversity.
In short, he is gross, slimy enough that you’ll need a shower and a steel-wool loofa after being in his company for two hours.
It’s the most incredible thing about this guy — he shows ZERO in the way of contrition; not so much as a limp gesture at genuine remorse.
Mind you, this is among the rawest, most uncut documentaries you’ll ever see. The drama unfolds in real-time; the crisis exploding before your very eyes.
Yet almost no one in the thick of it presents as an emotional, sensate creature.
These are facsimiles of people.
Weiner, for instance, absolutely refuses to utter the word infidelity.
Any time he’s doing solo meta-commentary on his being unfaithful to the mother of his children, he stammers and meekly spits out transparently camouflaging euphemisms; “when I did the dumb thing,” “the thing,” “the thing I did,” as though he’s left the coffee pot on or the fridge door open.
After watching the film, I have no doubt that he really doesn’t care, and removes himself above any indictment or even cursory examination of his character, because he has none.
The single most important issue in this film, recurring ad nauseum (literally, it’s sickening), is “What are we going to say,” in various permutations.
Here’s Weiner in apartment war room, backseat of a black sedan, makeshift campaign office, frenetic, apoplectic on his Blackberry, crack staff of youthful spin doctors glowering the way you do at your boss when his back is turned, and the operative question is always “What do we tell them, How do we say this, WHAT’S OUR STRATEGY?”
Ad hoc scripts are whipped up forthwith, and never, not once, do they ever concede to the most concise and immediately available answer: “The truth.”
If there is one anecdote to distill the hilarious delusion of Weiner’s futile NY mayoral campaign, it comes in the form of the corny cognomen assigned to Weiner’s erstwhile phone sex counterpart, Sydney Leathers, aka “Pineapple.”
Leathers wait I mean Pineapple, just as gratuitous and shameless as Weiner, shows up to the venue where Weiner’s to give his concession speech.
Word gets back to Weiner’s security guy, who then explains to the camera that “Pineapple is waiting at the venue,” before quickly remembering that there is no use in having cliched code-names if you are going to reference the actual person alongside the code-name in the same sentence.
The only thing separating this from full-blown, ridiculous satire is somebody whispering “The Eagle has landed” into their shirt-cuff.
Even so, do Pineapples ever go places and do things?
No, because they are Pineapples.
The one non-fruit person who shows even the slightest flicker of human warmth is Huma, Weiner’s betrayed wife and Hillary’s indispensable aide-de-camp, and this is frequently through a welling veil of tears or withering looks of white hot contempt.
You feel for her as she somehow carries on, steeled and stumping on the trail of her serial philanderer husband’s hopeless campaign.
“Oh thank god a real person finally,” you’ll mutter, feeling slightly less reptilian about it all.
At times though, you wonder “Why the hell is she doing this,” a question more to do with Weiner’s megalomaniacal unflappability than the bare facts of his cheating.
That why gets answered toward the end, when it’s revealed that Weiner is not above haranguing his beleaguered wife into appearing alongside him, even expecting her to show up and speak favorably on his behalf.
Eventually, she says no, enough’s enough, no longer interested in standing around rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic, especially when she has her own considerable career to attend to.
Here the final straw drops, when Weiner has the awe-inspiring, bilious gall to admonish his humiliated wife for refusing to run around making public appearances doing his bidding, standing alongside playing politician’s good wife.
That’s when you know, in the end, that this is an irreparable, irredeemable character, and maybe that’s precisely what makes this documentary so memorable.
Rarely do you see such unrepentant inhumanity presented in 3D technicolor, without even the slightest pretense to good or honorable or honest.
Rarely do you eat the sausage straight from the butcher’s hand.