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The Special Relationship (Film Review)
Aka, Peter Morgan's third film in his inofficial Blair trilogy (after The Deal and The Queen). Those trailers weren't lying. Richard Loncraine, who directs, hasn't quite Stephen Frears' easy touch, but then the film while starting off basically as a romantic comedy ends on a much darker note, so that's appropriate. Also, Morgan clearly lurks on lj, given some of the dialogue.
From the outset, there's an interesting difference between this film and not only the other two Blair films, but also the other Peter Morgan endeavour starring Michael Sheen and dealing with an odd not classifiable relationship, Frost/Nixon. To wit: none of the other films is as interested in the other relationships their two protagonists have as this one. Or maybe I should classify that: The Queen already has Cherie Blair around and prone to sarcastic one liners, but it doesn't really use the Blair marriage as a foil to, say, the relationship between the Queen and Prince Philip (which at any rate isn't a focus), and both Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Blair are relegated to about three lines in The Deal. Whereas here Peter Morgan is as interested in the Clinton marriage and Hillary (great performance by Hope Davis) as he is in the Blair and Clinton relationship, and in the Cherie and Hillary contrasts/parallels. It makes for a different balance.
What all three pictures share is Tony Blair starting in the weaker position with the respective other person and ending in the stronger, but while The Queen leaves the ironic foreshadowing to one sentence ("...because you thought that one day, it might happen to you. And it will, Mr. Blair, quite suddenly") and otherwise ends on a harmonious note, The Special Relationship goes for something darker, sadder and more complicated, but I'll get to that.
It starts out with Tony B., not yet but soon voted into office, being given a Presidential reception and crushing on America in general and Bill Clinton in particular in a big, big way. It's love at first sight, basically, and I don't have to paraphrase or exaggarate for comic effect because Morgan's script does it for me. Quoth Cherie, when her husband raves on about his new friend Bill: "Before you develop too much of a crush, let me remind you he's also the first President of the United State to be involved in a sexual harrassment suit." Meanwhile, a conversation among the Clintons reveals Tony's crush isn't completely one-sided. Says Bill: "He's quite a catch. It's not often that you meet a couple where the husband is more attractive than the wife." (Tch. I beg to differ, at least when Cherie is played by Helen McCrory.) Back to the Blairs: that line I used for my lj cut is worth quoting again and comes when Cherie somewhat enviously talks about how Hillary is treated as an equal and power sharer by her husband and how back in the Arkansas days they were refered to as "Billary". That's when Tony gets into shipping names ("If they are Billary, what are we, Terie?"), as his protests that he does confide in her and treat her as an equal etc. are met with another one liner about his boys' club with Peter and Alistair. Before I get to the serious stuff, let me end of with one more quote, said by Clinton about Cherie Blair: "She's from Liverpool. It's the Arkansas of England."
....
While Morgan has fun with his reverse Jamesian structure for about half the film - because early Blair is presented as something of an innocent here, falling for US wiles, US power and Clinton's rogue charm which is mixed with a "let's change the world together by progressive politics that are actually doable" pitch, only to to find the object of his affection revealing severe flaws (i.e. the Lewinsky affair, and an a refusal to do commit to more than airstrikes re: Kosovo), he also employs a West Wing level of idealism in that Blair and both Clintons are presented as being in politics not solely for power but with a sincere wish to use said power for good. The three events of Clinton's second and Blair's first term that are focused on in the script - the Northern Ireland peace process, the Lewinsky scandal and the Kosovo war - show the shift in power between the two: from Clinton helping Blair in a big brother/little brother fashion to Blair standing by Clinton through the infinitely cringe worthy scandal times (Blair during an American press conference actually quotes the book of Ruth - "wither thou goest, I will go" etc.) to Blair taking the initiative against Milosevic and catching a fatal case of hubris and messianic fervour while doing so. ("Let no one ever doubt again the moral justification for invading another country for humanitarian ends!") For all that The Special Relationship makes no bones about Clinton's flaws (and empathizes with both Hillary and Tony re: finding out he lied), it actually presents Bair's virtue as equally damaging; by the time he quotes Thatcher to his wife and tells Clinton "it is our duty as Christians to act", the fact that there is indeed a genocide to be stopped doesn't make the foreshadowing less ominous. The Clinton marriage recovers (shown in a conversation the two have re: Kosovo where he asks her whether or not it is the right thing to do, a tiny but significant difference to Blair's phrasing); the Blair and Clinton relationship does not as Blair greets the dawn of the Bush age with musings about now being able to be the senior partner to an American President and ignoring Clinton's comment, while they look at a tv image of Bush and Cheney, about the wisdom of going to bed with these two. "The Deal" ends with Blair and Brown eating together in a precarious truce, "The Queen" has Blair and the Queen sharing an actual conversation while they take a walk together and the end, but The Special Relationship, after letting Sheen!Blair watch Clinton leave in silence, with Clinton giving a Clintonian rueful smile and wave and Blair looking like he can't decide whether he just turned his back on an undeserving rogue and fraud or lost real love and common sense, presents us with an excerpt of the first Bush/Blair news conference with Real!Blair and Real!Bush instead of actors. It makes for a startling sensation, real Tony Blair after having seen Michael Sheen through the film, and yet it's perfect as he gives the same grin Sheen, playing him, gave at the start of the film while Bush declares Blair won him over with "a charm offensive" and they're going to get along just wonderfully well.
Loncraine starts the film with the song Friendship by Cole Porter to the footage of American Presidents and British Prime Ministers from Churchill and Roosevelt to Major and George H.W. Bush, and ends to the tune of Lonely Blue Boy and the image of Real!Blair. I doubt Morgan will write another Blair film; he strikes me as just enamored enough with his main character not to want to write the fall, and besides, in those juxtaposed last two scenes he probably said all he wanted to say on the subject. It's definitely more digestable than Blair's memoirs, and with the power that fiction has, will probably last longer.
P.S. Note to Peter Morgan: after all the bitching about the E.U. dragging their feet you give to Blair, you could at least have mentioned our own Third Way head of goverment and his Green Minister of Foreign Affairs got Germany involved in Kosovo, which was the first time since WWII and a revolutionary step with a still debated fallout in German politics. The EU doesn't solely consist of France, you know.
From the outset, there's an interesting difference between this film and not only the other two Blair films, but also the other Peter Morgan endeavour starring Michael Sheen and dealing with an odd not classifiable relationship, Frost/Nixon. To wit: none of the other films is as interested in the other relationships their two protagonists have as this one. Or maybe I should classify that: The Queen already has Cherie Blair around and prone to sarcastic one liners, but it doesn't really use the Blair marriage as a foil to, say, the relationship between the Queen and Prince Philip (which at any rate isn't a focus), and both Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Blair are relegated to about three lines in The Deal. Whereas here Peter Morgan is as interested in the Clinton marriage and Hillary (great performance by Hope Davis) as he is in the Blair and Clinton relationship, and in the Cherie and Hillary contrasts/parallels. It makes for a different balance.
What all three pictures share is Tony Blair starting in the weaker position with the respective other person and ending in the stronger, but while The Queen leaves the ironic foreshadowing to one sentence ("...because you thought that one day, it might happen to you. And it will, Mr. Blair, quite suddenly") and otherwise ends on a harmonious note, The Special Relationship goes for something darker, sadder and more complicated, but I'll get to that.
It starts out with Tony B., not yet but soon voted into office, being given a Presidential reception and crushing on America in general and Bill Clinton in particular in a big, big way. It's love at first sight, basically, and I don't have to paraphrase or exaggarate for comic effect because Morgan's script does it for me. Quoth Cherie, when her husband raves on about his new friend Bill: "Before you develop too much of a crush, let me remind you he's also the first President of the United State to be involved in a sexual harrassment suit." Meanwhile, a conversation among the Clintons reveals Tony's crush isn't completely one-sided. Says Bill: "He's quite a catch. It's not often that you meet a couple where the husband is more attractive than the wife." (Tch. I beg to differ, at least when Cherie is played by Helen McCrory.) Back to the Blairs: that line I used for my lj cut is worth quoting again and comes when Cherie somewhat enviously talks about how Hillary is treated as an equal and power sharer by her husband and how back in the Arkansas days they were refered to as "Billary". That's when Tony gets into shipping names ("If they are Billary, what are we, Terie?"), as his protests that he does confide in her and treat her as an equal etc. are met with another one liner about his boys' club with Peter and Alistair. Before I get to the serious stuff, let me end of with one more quote, said by Clinton about Cherie Blair: "She's from Liverpool. It's the Arkansas of England."
....
While Morgan has fun with his reverse Jamesian structure for about half the film - because early Blair is presented as something of an innocent here, falling for US wiles, US power and Clinton's rogue charm which is mixed with a "let's change the world together by progressive politics that are actually doable" pitch, only to to find the object of his affection revealing severe flaws (i.e. the Lewinsky affair, and an a refusal to do commit to more than airstrikes re: Kosovo), he also employs a West Wing level of idealism in that Blair and both Clintons are presented as being in politics not solely for power but with a sincere wish to use said power for good. The three events of Clinton's second and Blair's first term that are focused on in the script - the Northern Ireland peace process, the Lewinsky scandal and the Kosovo war - show the shift in power between the two: from Clinton helping Blair in a big brother/little brother fashion to Blair standing by Clinton through the infinitely cringe worthy scandal times (Blair during an American press conference actually quotes the book of Ruth - "wither thou goest, I will go" etc.) to Blair taking the initiative against Milosevic and catching a fatal case of hubris and messianic fervour while doing so. ("Let no one ever doubt again the moral justification for invading another country for humanitarian ends!") For all that The Special Relationship makes no bones about Clinton's flaws (and empathizes with both Hillary and Tony re: finding out he lied), it actually presents Bair's virtue as equally damaging; by the time he quotes Thatcher to his wife and tells Clinton "it is our duty as Christians to act", the fact that there is indeed a genocide to be stopped doesn't make the foreshadowing less ominous. The Clinton marriage recovers (shown in a conversation the two have re: Kosovo where he asks her whether or not it is the right thing to do, a tiny but significant difference to Blair's phrasing); the Blair and Clinton relationship does not as Blair greets the dawn of the Bush age with musings about now being able to be the senior partner to an American President and ignoring Clinton's comment, while they look at a tv image of Bush and Cheney, about the wisdom of going to bed with these two. "The Deal" ends with Blair and Brown eating together in a precarious truce, "The Queen" has Blair and the Queen sharing an actual conversation while they take a walk together and the end, but The Special Relationship, after letting Sheen!Blair watch Clinton leave in silence, with Clinton giving a Clintonian rueful smile and wave and Blair looking like he can't decide whether he just turned his back on an undeserving rogue and fraud or lost real love and common sense, presents us with an excerpt of the first Bush/Blair news conference with Real!Blair and Real!Bush instead of actors. It makes for a startling sensation, real Tony Blair after having seen Michael Sheen through the film, and yet it's perfect as he gives the same grin Sheen, playing him, gave at the start of the film while Bush declares Blair won him over with "a charm offensive" and they're going to get along just wonderfully well.
Loncraine starts the film with the song Friendship by Cole Porter to the footage of American Presidents and British Prime Ministers from Churchill and Roosevelt to Major and George H.W. Bush, and ends to the tune of Lonely Blue Boy and the image of Real!Blair. I doubt Morgan will write another Blair film; he strikes me as just enamored enough with his main character not to want to write the fall, and besides, in those juxtaposed last two scenes he probably said all he wanted to say on the subject. It's definitely more digestable than Blair's memoirs, and with the power that fiction has, will probably last longer.
P.S. Note to Peter Morgan: after all the bitching about the E.U. dragging their feet you give to Blair, you could at least have mentioned our own Third Way head of goverment and his Green Minister of Foreign Affairs got Germany involved in Kosovo, which was the first time since WWII and a revolutionary step with a still debated fallout in German politics. The EU doesn't solely consist of France, you know.