Alex Gibney is, at least from my experience, an impressively solid documentarian. He doesn’t stray in to the more conceptual aspects of his subjects like say Errol Morris, nor does he wave nagging fingers at hot-topic issues like say Michael Moore. Instead Alex Gibney approaches his subjects (the lying sneaks of Enron, the war in Iraq, etc.) with a workmanlike deconstruction. His approach pulls away the layers without telling the audience how we should feel or what we should be thinking. In his new film, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer about a subject as divisive and possibly scandalous as the one-time Democratic superstar, this approach allows for an astonishing breadth of ideas and themes to be addressed without drawing a hard line in the sand. Instead Gibney creates a film that not only encompasses his subject quite fully, but also gives an expansive amount of breathing room for discussion of the ideas.
Eliot Spitzer,
for those of you not wire-jacked in to the 24-hour news
cycle, was the one-time New York Attorney General turned
Governor (described in the film as the biggest thing to hit
the Democratic party pre-Obama) who slept with a steady of
prostitutes and ended up exposed, and voluntarily removed
from office. The big coup in the film is Gibney’s lengthy
interview with the exceptionally smart and well spoken
former governor. The discussion of his life, career, and the
incidents which led to Spitzer’s downfall make up the
framework of the film. The spaces in between are filled with
the requisite, though amazingly well done, informative
interviews with political foes, high-end madames, friends
and colleagues and everything in between. Gibney’s reach in
the film paints a scandal that has exceptionally deep roots.
This is not just the story of a man who couldn’t control his
penis. It’s the story of a politician not scared to speak
out against corruption, and the men who, seemingly, aspired
to bring him to his knees. To say that Client 9’s
only goal is to pull the curtains back on the true story of
Spitzer’s fall is a great disservice to Gibney’s film.
Instead Client 9 is a film that shines a spotlight on
not only our entire political system, but the way in which
sex and the temptation of it has become compounded in the
American view in to a near moral dilemma. Spitzer succumbs
to the temptations of sex but never does it effect his
bombastic political career, instead it cracks his impervious
armor wide open, allowing the grabby hands of the business
elite a stepping stool to hang him from.
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