OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

There are times when you really, really don’t want to know the truth.

Seriously–and Our Brand Is Crisis likely isn’t telling you anything that you don’t already know about the ugly world of high-level political campaigning, but it doesn’t bring any joy to have your worst suspicions confirmed. The truth may set you free, but it’ll also kill your appetite–the same way that first contact with the alien organism known as James Carville will put you off eating for more days than you might expect.

Carville, who had a big hand in getting Bill Clinton elected in 1992, was already the star of another documentary–D.A. Pennebaker’s Oscar-nominated The War Room. In Our Brand Is Crisis he pops up like an unkillable vampire with his firm, Greenberg Carville Shrum, in the centre of the action, but thankfully not the focus of the film–instead we get Carville’s lackey, the earnest, well-scrubbed and intelligent Jeremy Rosner.

Retained by Bolivian ex-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada as he makes another bid for the country’s highest office in 2002, Rosner is methodical, clinical, cold and very calculating. As an eager exporter of his definition of democracy, Rosner can mouth all of the formulations we expect from energetic defenders of the free world, but there are some ugly truths behind his pious talk of "market-driven social democracy."

Rosner and company proceed to work at "rebranding" Gonzalo–popularly known as "Goni"–for the suspicious citizens of Bolivia. It’s a tough go for the Democratic firm, as the ex-president is so far down in the polls he seems defeated even before he starts running. Goni’s term in the ’90s branded him (not unreasonably) as a stooge of Big Business, and so Rosner attempts to change this image.

Given full access by Carville, Goni and Rosner, Boynton shows us the appalling side of campaigning that we always knew in our hearts was there. There are focus groups, there’s glad-handing and manipulation of journalists, there’s lots of backroom politicking–all by people who are sincere in their beliefs, but somehow incapable of understanding how frightening the way they go about their business looks to those of us outside of it.

Fact is, Our Brand Is Crisis is a horror movie–a darkly comedic one, where we get to see the real-world repercussions as political campaigners like Carville and company become the global norm. "The frame for us is crisis, we must own crisis, it’s a message we can bet the house on" goes the mantra for GCS, and in it you can see exactly where the horror lies.

What you’re also seeing in Our Brand Is Crisis is an unabashed view of the way democracy is subverted and manipulated by media, political consultants and the very wealthy. It’s one of the most cold-blooded documentaries ever made, on in which we see the future of entire nations played out as a tossed-off game of chance–and it’s our future as well.