Barney Frank, Richard Holbrooke and the pitfalls of making a wonkumentary
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Version 0 of 1. Presidents, lawmakers and other Beltway bigwigs make worthy and sometimes even fascinating subjects for documentary films — except when they don’t, which happens a lot in a genre we’ll call “wonkumentary.” Even a subject as entertainingly mouthy and willingly provocative as Barney Frank, the retired Massachusetts congressman at the center of Showtime’s film “Compared to What? The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank,” loses something when he and the filmmakers following him determine that legacy takes precedence over story. Too many times, the film that promises the fullest and most exclusive warts-and-all portrait turns out to be little more than the equivalent of a polite Wikipedia entry. Showtime’s anticlimactic 2013 film about Dick Cheney comes to mind, as do a couple of PBS projects in recent years on Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. Once in a while, a filmmaker will deliver something candid or just revealing enough to leave a lasting impression. I can still recall some of the bunker-mentality conversations among the Romney clan from Netflix’s 2012 campaign ride-along, “Mitt”; and for its artful contextualizing of the 1980s and willingness to take a point of view, HBO’s “Reagan” still stands out. “Compared to What?” (premiering Friday on Showtime) and another new documentary on HBO about Richard C. Holbrooke, “The Diplomat” (premiering Nov. 2), offer both the promise and pitfalls of such undertakings. Of course a movie about Frank, who retired from public service in 2013, sounds interesting even if you can’t stand him. And the life of former U.N. ambassador Holbrooke, who died in 2010, should shed new light on familiar conflicts (Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan) from a deep-insider’s perspective. Although it may be surprising to the filmmakers — who probably struggled, as all directors do, to find spots to trim the amount of material they gathered — it will come as no shock to viewers familiar with the genre that both films are too long. Like farewell speeches, award banquets and funerals where boldface names deliver multiple eulogies, the wonkumentary adheres to protocol. Once a source is miked up, interviews tend toward plaudits. Getting juicy stuff out of them — or even hitherto untold anecdotes — is like pulling teeth. Produced and directed by Sheila Canavan and Michael Chandler, “Compared to What?” spends too much of its 1 1/2 hours cementing Frank’s legacy as one of the last lawmakers on the Hill who understood the art of compromise. It’s a timely quality to note, but, as retold in news clips and the language of Sunday talk shows, Frank’s hardest-won victories (including the signing of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 that ushered in post-recession finance regulations) take on the chronological aspect of bullet points on a résumé. The film is too admiring of its subject. “Compared to What?” is more entertaining (and revealing) in a present tense, capturing Frank as an inveterate schlub septuagenarian whose first apartment as a young congressman featured black garbage bags covering the few windows in a basement dwelling — not only shutting out the light, but also acting as a handy closet metaphor for the homosexuality he kept secret until he was 40. This Frank is rumpled, rascally and always outspoken, even as he packs up to leave Washington for good. [Story time: Barney Frank brings his wit and Washington wisdom to Harvard] Also, as the cameras capture him in 2012, he is planning his wedding to Jim Ready, who in temperament and personality is Frank’s exact opposite — quiet, organized, earthy. What we get here is one more fairly rote happy-ending tale about the gay rights and marriage equality movements, which leaves a viewer to wonder whether the film couldn’t be recut, to tell the moving story of a pleasant, handsome younger man (Ready) who somehow decided he needed to spend the rest of his life with Barney Frank. Love truly is a miracle, isn’t it? In “The Diplomat,” David Holbrooke takes a path similar to that taken by Rory Kennedy in her excellent 2012 portrait of her mother, Ethel — the difference being that she’s a much more experienced filmmaker and, let’s be honest, her very-much-still-alive subject gave her the irresistible gift of opening up just enough to draw an audience that’s ready-made for all things Kennedy. [David Holbrooke on making a documentary about his father] Holbrooke has a much more daunting task: to bring his father, a calculating career diplomat, to life not only for us “Homeland” addicts who can only be bothered with this sort of stuff when it’s made wildly and implausibly thrilling, but to also discover more about the father who was too busy — too in the thick of it all — to be a real dad. “The Diplomat” does its stylish best to make the elder Holbrooke’s biographical details — the clip job, basically — zing with ambitious exploit and achievement. Sources are many, including Hillary and Bill Clinton, Bob Woodward, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Al Gore, David Petraeus and Samantha Power (among many others), but nearly all of them seem to think they are still at the elder Holbrooke’s memorial service instead of at a point where they can speak freely of a man whose ego sometimes got the best of him. In an unnecessarily clubby backstage moment, Hillary Clinton asks David a question as she’s being primped and fitted for her mike: “What are you going to call [the film]?” “ ‘The Diplomat,’ ” he replies proudly as Clinton offers an approving smile. For someone who is generally known to reserve most of her cards in the presence of a camera, Clinton offers one of the most telling recollections in “The Diplomat,” of how Richard Holbrooke and President Obama were destined to not get along: In what must have been a startling moment, Holbrooke, whom Obama passed over for secretary of state and instead assigned to broker an end to the Afghanistan war, learned the hard way that the president didn’t want to talk about the parallel experiences Holbrooke witnessed in Vietnam. It was simply too long ago; there’s something exquisitely painful about the discovery that one has outlived one’s own expertise. As the film nears the two-hour mark, the son seems not much more closer to finding the father he seeks. Aside from Diane Sawyer (who dated Richard after his divorce from David’s mother and who can turn empathy on and off like the seasoned pro she is), no one in “The Diplomat” seems especially willing to aid David in his emotional quest. This gets at the problem with wonkumentaries — as well as Washington-centric books and memoirs. The stiff reticence of the sources is palpable (everyone’s saving the good stuff for their own projects?), as is their constant calculation of what is being said for the record. “The Diplomat” and “Compared to What?” are, in their ways, lovely attempts to humanize two very complex men. That they fall short just seems to come with the territory. Compared to What? The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank (88 minutes) airs Friday at 9 p.m. on Showtime. The Diplomat: The Life and Legacy of Richard Holbrooke (105 minutes) airs Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. on HBO. |