For its first third, Nick Broomfield's documentary feels worthy of a toast by the Tea Party. Our bumbling Brit, gamely kitted out in red-check lumberwear, heads to Wasilla, Alaska, where he's charmed by Sarah Palin's parents – plus Chuck, their antler-sucking puppy – and nods politely at gasps of adoration from wide-eyed Palin pals.
He and his subject even seem to hit it off when Broomfield requests an interview at a book-signing: "You betcha!" is her dazzle-grinned reply.
Such apparent eagerness to be amiable only makes the last hour the more devastating. As Broomfield encounters more and more local people, and his requests for interviews are batted away with increasing energy, so the picture of a woman who appears to have made more enemies that most of us have seen episodes of the Sopranos sharpens into focus.
One after another classmates and relatives come forward to grind axes and shiver at the prospect of a Palin presidency. They're joined by former campaign managers, chief strategists, PR agents, mentors, preachers and policemen, all singing from the same hymn sheet: Palin's ruthlessness and venom for revenge knows little limit.
You Betcha! works too as a portrait of how place can produce personalities: Wasilla is a defensive, isolated community where even Palin's detractors vote Republican, wear stars and stripes braces, and keep their beauty queen tiaras wrapped carefully in cake tins. It's a city where prom-queen politics can bleed far into adulthood, and one man's theory about how Palin still acts like "the most popular pre-teen girl" rings right when you hear her giggle at enemies being insulted, or watch her chew gum. It's the stuff of high school horror movies: can you stop the most popular girl in school from stabbing you in the back?
Now does that sound like the Sarah Palin that we all know and loath or what?
Tomorrow the film will have its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. There will be few "boots on the ground" there on behalf of IM readers so fairly soon afterward we should be able to read reviews from those who are well versed in the personality and bizarre behaviors of Sarah Louise Palin.
On a similar note I am supposed to be receiving an update on Fred's babygate book so you can all look forward to learning a little more about that in the near future as well.
It has been a great summer, and it looks like the fall will be equally satisfying for all of us who have been anxiously awaiting the end to the Grizzled Mama's reign of terror.
Update: The LA Times has a review as well.
The sum total of Broomfield's research — whether with a former Wasilla mayor (and Palin mentor), a fired legislative advisor or a town gossip who was once close to the Palins and Heaths — is of a personality who can turn quickly and decisively against her allies and sees the world in strict with-us-or-against-us terms.
What first might strike some filmgoers as a matter of standard political maneuvering soon becomes more pathological. As Stephen Schmidt, the John McCain advisor who initially advised choosing Palin for the ticket but wound up souring on her, says, Palin has "40 or 50 or 60 feuds" going at any one time.
Broomfield's approach of talking mainly to enemies (perhaps not by design, since her current allies were surely not running around giving interviews to him) can give the sense of a stacked deck. Still, the very fact at Palin has so many enemies in the first place, and from within her own campaign and party, is telling. (Broomfield juxtaposes a lot of these interviews with an attempt to sketch out Palin's belief system from her church and other affiliations; those moments pack less punch.)
At the end of this review the critic mentions that this documentary may suffer due to the fact that Palin is no longer considered a viable Presidential candidate and that her influence is waning dramatically. And that is a valid observation.
I recently suffered a rather pointed attack from some who are usually on my side of the fence after I wrote that I thought Palin might be suffering poor health as well as a potential mental breakdown, and then again when I suggested that her participation in the half marathon race in Iowa was very likely staged. (By the way that remains my opinion today.)
At first I must admit that I was quite surprised at the blow back, but then I realized that the people who were the most upset at me were those who had a financial interest in Palin remaining a viable Presidential candidate or influential force in politics. They weren't concerned that I was wrong, they were concerned that I was right.
