Best of Enemies film

Best of Enemies2015

R 87 min.
Media Ranch - Motto Pictures - Tremolo Productions

All things 1968 interest me.  It's the year the world split in 2 and we received as it's twin child the birth of 2 cultures, and the answers are still being questioned even now.  In fact, they are working themselves out.... even now, hence my novel that I've been working on for 10 years.  Right, a novel, me.... well, about the film....

Best of Enemies is the recap of the 1968 spectacle that ABC launched in an effort to save its dying influence in the media against the only other 2 players, NBC and CBS who were in bed with the political parties to the teeth, and broadcast a perceived iconoclast of personalities in William F. Buckley Jr. Vs. Gore Vidal.  It was naughty vs. virtuous (you were expecting nice, no, not in this review), basically a new conservative, right wing power vs. the newly empowered left-winged liberal (not libertarian, please don't get those confused) social and political anti-establishment humanism.

The film covers the mood of the period well, with cuts to the surrounding circuses of both National Conventions, in Miami and in Chicago, drawing well on the contrasts in locations, and being honest about the eccentricities of both, capturing the personalities of both parties evenly it seems.  The narration of several key side-commentators of notable interest was spot-on in many cases, such as the observation that the left's characterization of the conservative movement was attempting to draw similarities to that of fascist Nazism in order to demonize it, and create a great wave of negative public opinion against it.  During the debates this is what the "cherry bomb" was referring to, the nasty underpinning that many would not say, but believed.  When it came out in the debates, it was clear that this was the issue that was both a false positive, and yet presciently real, and also.... what made Buckley buckle, and lose his otherwise detached mannerly argumentations.

I felt that here however, is where content was underplayed over the context of that emotional moment, because the film consistently returned to it, time and again, as if it were that moment of defeat for WFB that drove his life ever after, and the issues be damned, that's what he spent the rest of his life dousing the flames of, a sort of dominant defeat that was never recovered.  I disagree.  This is the central focus of the last part of the story that the film portrays that I would have to say ignores the vast evidence to the contrary, that Buckley's life was filled not with vitriol over a single enemy as much as he in fact turned that moment of regret into fuel that powered his ongoing positional rhetoric against the cultural upheaval of idealists into his dying days.  The moment of weakness that seemed to look so ugly for Buckley on the Charlie Rose show sample that was included in the film, and was in fact a moment of personal resignation was paired with the "non-admission" of his regret over that debate moment with Vidal, to make it seem as if that were the driving force of his life, and that the moment of defeat were in fact the "end" of his debate...in effect, he had lost the debate.

This is filmmaking ladies and gentlemen.  The power of the media proves itself once again to be almost indecipherable from the truth, and the power of persuasion still rests with those who wield it, be it ever so benign, or malevolent.  Documentary?  There is no such thing.  The moment you point the camera in any direction, if automatically leaves out at least 2/3 of the whole view.

As much as all things 1968 interest me, and as much as I relate to the content of this film, knowing most of the principle players and parts they have to play, the timeline that I have memorized, from April to Oct (that's from the death of MLK to the raising of the fists at the Olympics), this film did not overwhelm me.  I was delighted at the revelations of the tete a tete between the protagonists, the bantering of the debates themselves, but at the same time was left wanting for more.  It's strange how the film spent so very little time on the actual debates themselves and relied on commentators and narration.  I am particularly biased in this way however, in that if it were me personally, I would have just opened with a few explanatory titles, and then rolled the debates themselves, in entirety.  But of course, out of context, most filmgoers now would not be in the least bit impressed with that, as the knowledge of the 60s wanes, a full 1.3 generations separation between it and the present.

To many of the current generation this film will seem irrelevant, or there may be some separation of the content from the modern context.  A 20-something may regard this film as nostalgic, and completely miss the cultural relevancy of the content of those debates, as passé, as historical, as something to be learned from, but not worried over.  That is, of course, a mistake.  The debates are still raging all around us.  These men are both dead, but the divide they represented still exists as surely as the Mason-Dixon line, and as surely as the Panama Canal, or the poles where one has Polar Bears, and the other has Penguins.  Such debates are still ensuing, and now are in our courts, our schools, and our religious culture, sending one part one way, and one another.  Most recently the debate was resurfaced in the media moment of Ben Stein's "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed", and David Horowitz's book "ProFessors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America".  These were not created in 1968, but in the last 10 years.

I highly recommend this film for those interested in the subject of the 60s, if you're not schooled in it widely, or if this is of some interest to you, but be forewarned, it is not comprehensive, and I believe gives a...well, biased view of the circumstances under which it's "documentary" feel leads us to believe that it is undivided, unmodified, and consummate truth.  For it's length of course, it is attempting to explore an important moment in history and expose for examination 2 important figures of that moment, and you can't cram all of that surrounding history into 87 minutes, let alone 2.5 hours, so this film ends up being targeted to those of us who already know the context, to some degree as to have it make sense. Please read and watch more widely than this narrow 87 minutes allows.

Agitatus