Film at Eleven: Bigger, Better Conspiracy Theory

It is rare these days for a movie not to insult your intelligence. For every 50 brain-numbing flicks like Twister, Volcano or Con Air, we might be blessed with one smart film like Pulp Fiction or Fargo. Hollywood is now in the business for the masses--"The audiences want earthquake, volcano, flood, tornado and asteroid movies, so that's what we'll give them," the studio execs smugly think to themselves.

Wag the Dog is director Barry Levinson's wonderfully biting satire of this prevailing attitude, which links show business to American politics. The people want to be caught up in the swirling momentum of performances, Levinson implies--whether it is a big-budget alien movie or the Presidential speech on television, Americans want to be entertained. The two arenas of politics and Hollywood, no matter how opposed in fundamental purposes, end up reaching their ends by the same means.

Satire is exceedingly difficult to pull of as a genre of film. Wag the Dog compounds this burden with black comedy. The load eventually proves to be too much for the film to carry, but the film has to be admired for its sheer effort. Everyone gets brutally skewered in this one: politicians, filmmakers, actors, reporters and, of course, the credulous masses.

The scenario, in itself, is remarkably offensive. Two weeks before he is up for reelection, the president is accused of making advances on a Girl Scout in the Oval Office. The media, of course, has no qualms and does not hesitate for a second in pouncing on the story. The president's opponent, in fact, takes it upon himself to broadcast a new commercial urging the masses not to vote for a "man who's lost his integrity"--the message is hilariously set against the background of the song, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." Amidst all the frenzy, mysterious political consultant Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) is called to resolve the catastrophe. Perfectly calm and entirely confident, Brean devises his master plan.

The President, Brean decides, will stage a war over nuclear terrorism with Albania. "Why Albania?" the President asks with confusion. "Why not? They're standoffish. Who would trust Albanians?" Brean replies and so the question is settled. And thus begins the deliciously corrupt 'producing' of a war by Brean and Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), a loquacious Hollywood producer who equates the crisis with the importance of maintaining a full tan. The war campaign is perfectly orchestrated--the President is photographed with random civilians posing as Albanians, clips that feature screaming young girls are shot on a soundstage and sent directly to news stations, and Willie Nelson is even brought in to write a theme song. When the stakes are raised near election day, the gang even finds a random 'hero' for their war--Willie Schuman (Woody Harrelson) is given his own celebratory song, slogan and national campaign. Schuman turns out to be a psycho military prisoner who has been convicted of raping a nun, but that's irrelevant--as long as the show is entertaining, the masses are in the hands of whoever controls the deception.

There are, of course, some major flaws in Mamet's screenplay, not least of which is the basic premise itself. Would the American public really forget about the President being an alleged pedophile and suddenly turn all attention to Albania? The answer, of course, is a resounding no. In satirizing the intelligence of the masses, the film accidentally overestimates their gullibility.

The film also lacks coherency. It wavers between being blatantly smug and jibing at pop culture, never quite hitting its stride. The ending, unfortunately, is particularly unsatisfying--it sinks to triteness in an effort to find a quick resolution.

But Wag the Dog remains vastly entertaining even during its most tenuous moments. De Niro, for the first time in ages, is wonderfully likeable in the antihero role. We should hate, loath, despise Brean for his shameless dishonesty--but we don't. Instead, we welcome his machinations and feel strangely vindicated by the possibility of his pulling off the scheme. Hoffman is the perfect counterpart to De Niro's smug political monster. He vamps and raves about how 'producers get no respect,' and we get the strange sensation that he is himself a unabashed politician.

The smartest thing about Wag the Dog is that Levinson never puts a face on the President. We never really know--nor really care--about his status or his quest to be reelected. Instead, whether Brean will actually have his Albanian showdown remains more important.

No matter how ridiculous the concept seems, we realize by the end of Wag the Dog that delusion of the masses on a grand scale is a brutally realistic possibility. The media has the power to whip up an emotional whirlwind so powerful that all of America gets trapped in the show. It is the concept, after all, that makes the disaster movies which studio execs love so deplorably viable. Audiences are bludgeoned with an onslaught of nifty special effects and pounded into submission. Who is to say politics is not the same?