March 24, 2006
"Our Brand is Crisis"
I recently had the pleasure of engaging in a talkback with Rachel Boynton, the filmmaker behind, “Our Brand is Crisis,” a documentary film, after a showing at the IFP Center in Manhattan and before the film’s March 21 airdate on Britain’s BBC. Her documentary follows the effect of globalized politics on the Bolivian elections of 2002 and on the country into the present. “Our Brand is Crisis” focuses its attention on the role of American political consultants hired by former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (known as Goni), an unpopular figure, who nonetheless ran a sophisticated campaign to regain the Presidency with their expensive advice.
The consultants, of course, are the exclusive and reknowned firm, Greenberg Carville Shrum. Their cache comes mostly from the charisma and notoriety of James Carville, who made the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid,” famous in a documentary about his management of 1992 Clinton campaign, “The War Room.” The firm sells their services internationally to candidates who meet their “Third Way” neo-liberal criteria, candidates from all over the globe when US elections aren’t occupying their efforts.
The candidate, Goni, had previously been President of the Bolivian Senate during the 1980’s, authoring a “shock therapy,” plan to end hyperinflation. As President during the 1990’s, he was credited with bringing bilingual education and decentralization to the South American country during his term, but was mostly remembered by citizens for failing to create the 500,000 jobs he had promised.
Nonetheless, Goni fit the profile of the kind of pro-US, liberal capitalist politician who might be viewed as a Democrat in the United States, but who in Bolivia was far to the right of leftist candidates from the majority indigenous population like Evo Morales. In a climate of hard times, Goni would have an uphill fight in the 2002 elections, running well behind another candidate for “change,” a rightist mayor, Manfred Reyes Villa, head of the New Republican Force (NFR).
Boynton had extraordinary access in her production to all the principals in the Goni campaign, having separately approached the candidate and the consultants. She described this as being key to keeping any of the subjects from denying her camera permission to be inside strategy meetings or calls. The film clearly benefited from such comfortable moments when the politician's and consultants' guard is not raised to the implications of being recorded.
Rather than spoil the fun of watching this film unfold, I’ll save the amazing narrative plot of the campaign and historical events for the film audience and concentrate on the way Boynton chose what to cover and how to approach her material. The first choice, what to cover was brilliant. As a neophyte producer/director, Boynton couldn’t have picked a better group to follow to describe the twisted relationship between American-style political campaigning and a Latin American country in the throes of a crisis.
“Our Brand is Crisis” takes its title from a briefing given the candidate early in the 2002 campaign by Jeremy Rosner, the consultant from Greenberg Carville Shrum who heads the Goni team. They seek to "own" and market the country's crisis, the way one would sell any brand. The way that Boynton cuts the film of this briefing and subsequent meetings between the candidate’s people, Goni himself, and the consultants is another basic filmmaking choice that works for the material.
Rather than breaking away from these sessions to provide background or commentary, Boynton lets the participants tell their own story, either in the scenes themselves or in interviews that seem to occur both during and after the campaign. The effect is devastating to the group on the screen. Rosner in particular does himself serious damage, coming across as cold and calculating in his interviews and in meetings where he describes ways they are smearing the right-wing candidate through unsubstantiated whisperings about corruption. Another choice to associate the rightist to the military is made by repeatedly showing a decades-old photograph of Manfred Reyes Villa in an officer’s cap.
Another production choice Boynton made during the campaign was to search out the indigenous campesino marchers who showed up all over the country to protest their exclusion from power in a country made up with a majority indigenous population. After a day of missteps, Boynton and her cameraman finally made a serendipitous meeting with some of the marchers, right around the twilight hour, making for some unforgettable footage that contextualizes the political scheming going on in La Paz while most of the country scratches out a meager living outside the capital.
The film takes advantage of a great bit of history that happens largely off-camera, but that is informed by the story it does capture. The corruption and manipulations of the political insiders finally pale by comparison to the broader history taking place in the streets of La Paz, but the story we see on-screen informs the audience's understanding of the changes taking place there.
See this film, if you can find it. When you do, notice how a filmmaker takes a seemingly small story and raises it to indicate the global implications it raises by making good choices and following them as the unbelievable occurs.
Posted by billkav at 08:21 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack