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October 19, 2006

Conventioneers

As someone who dislikes partisanship and who, at least occasionally, seeks out opposing points of view to see where we may agree, I really wanted to like ‘Conventioneers.’ The film, winner of the Independent Spirit Awards John Cassavetes Award in 2006, chronicles the relationship of a Democratic activist and a Republican delegate to the 2004 Republican National Convention against the backdrop of the convention, as well as another Democratic activist who is actually hired to work at the Convention. Director Mora Stephens comments in promotional material that relationships that cross party lines are becoming a rare thing in these days of hyperpartisanship, which led me to believe the purpose of the film was to decry the hatred that seems to exist between people from competing political parties.

The film is does a terrific job of providing us with two interesting protagonists. David Massey, Republican delegate from Texas, is a true believer who seems to really think that what he’s doing is a good thing until he runs into an old college friend, Lea Jones, who is deep in the left-wing protest scene and is in New York to protest the convention. Both seem like real three-dimensional people rather than caricatures, despite their views (each is pretty far from the center, at least as I define the center), and the film’s portrayal of their relationship is tender and somewhat painful to watch, as they deal with their respective significant others and their political divergence weighed against their clear attraction to one another. The actors do a good job of portraying those strains, and I found that the story really pulled me in, admittedly, rooting for love to win over politics.

The film also has two subplots, one involving the relationship between Lea and her father and the other a former protester named Dylan Murtaugh who is hired to translate the President’s convention speech in sign language during the convention. The father subplot is so minor it is apparently forgotten, as it never seems to really be resolved. The translator subplot is much more interesting, but it needed a bit more development as well. Murtaugh has the chance to make a big statement during the President’s speech, undermining him during the very convention, yet when we see him make his decision, we never really learn exactly why he went the way he did. It is, admittedly, a subplot, but I think it would have been much stronger had the film developed it just a little more, perhaps by cutting out the less interesting father subplot.

The film’s most interesting character, however, is the convention itself. The film was actually made during the 2004 RNC (and, as we are informed during the credits, many of the filmmakers were arrested during the filming of the movie), so the backdrop of this love story are the throngs of protestors who set up shop outside Madison Square Garden to decry the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, and so on. While I am not generally enamored of protests like that, if only because they seem to often be more theater than political statement, that shouldn’t detract from the color it adds to the film. There’s little doubt of the filmmakers’ politics, although Stephens is generally pretty careful about letting them affect the story, and the film is a pretty effective reminder of just how controversial President Bush is and the strong emotions he has stirred among many Americans.

Despite these strong points, the film lost me with the final scene. To its credit, the movie doesn’t try to offer some pat ending to the difficult problem it has established. But while everything up to that moment is presented in a realistic and believable manner, the very last scene of the film is so jarring that it tore me out of the story and left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. I would be interested to see what people with more left-leaning politics think of it, however, as I cannot rule out my politics affecting my analysis. And despite my disappointment, I can’t deny that ‘Conventioneers’ is a very good movie. Indeed, much of my disappointment is due to the effect of one jarring scene undermining what I think is an otherwise excellent film.

‘Conventioneers’ will premiere in New York City on October 20th. Which is unfortunate for the rest of us, but hopefully it will do well there so they can branch out to the rest of the country and give more people a chance to see it.