About "The War Room"

           

             D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus collaborated to direct The War Room in the 1992 Democratic primaries and the general presidential election, and it was quite a humdinger of a movie let alone a documentary. The main thing that made this film extraordinary was how it created characters to follow and who it chose as characters to follow.

            The two men chosen to focus on for the film are George Stephanopoulos and James Carville, the Communications Director and Lead Campaign Strategist, respectively. The reason why these men are compelling in the first place, is their position in the campaign. I think it would be tempting to do something like focus on either the face of the campaign, Bill Clinton, or to take a single volunteer, intern, or state supporter, someone who does a great deal of leg work but not a lot of planning, because it is a political documentary. However, James and George are ideal characters because they are consistent throughout the narrative, they aren’t as visible as Clinton, which still gives the film a revelatory kind of air, and because they extraordinarily vivid and complex people.

            A credit to D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus has to be editing the film and carefully creating personalities for Carville and Stephanopoulos for most of the film, but then carefully rounding them out as the movie draws on. Let’s look at how Pennebaker and Hegedus accomplish this for both people. In James Carville’s case, they play up his nickname “The Ragin’ Cajun” and they shape his footage to show his brashness, sarcasm, wit, and tenacity in the face of different adversities. But as the film goes on we discover that Carville is in a serious relationship with Mary Matalin, the campaign director for Clinton’s opponent in the general election. But the completion of Carville’s rounding is on Election Day. He no longer appears confident and witty, he despondently predicts a loss and comments how he hopes that the loss won’t be by a landslide. While the Clinton administration is evidence that they won, at that moment in the documentary the filmmakers chose to attend to their characters and complete rounding them out.

            As for George Stephanopoulos’ portrayal, the filmmaker’s perform a similar action to Carville’s character creation. The filmmakers take special care to construct Stephanopoulos as the pretty-boy numbers man of the Clinton campaign. He is shown to often be even tempered and the one tasked with providing the hard evidence to back up jabs or defenses that Carville constructs. But again, like Carville, the filmmakers round out this character they created and, in fact, they do a great deal of rounding out near the end. In the film, while Carville is despondent, Stephanopoulos is managing the campaign headquarters, in the afternoon/evening the headquarters receives a phone call, the caller begins making claims that could be damaging to Clinton and the campaign. In one, fell, swoop Stephanopoulos changes from even-keeled and calm to a cold aggressor. We even hear him say to the caller that the tactic is foolish, ill-timed, and finally Stephanopoulos threatens that if the caller carries out their plan that he will ensure he “never works in “Democratic politics again”. It is a chilling moment where we see that the handsome faced, numbers man also can be calculating, and just as aggressive as his counterpart.

            It is because of the creation of these two characters that The War Room has become a classic, not just amongst documentary film lovers, but also amongst general movie connoisseurs. It provides the film a base which the viewers can attach themselves to while there is a swirl and melee of action and people entering and exiting the film.