Peter Viney's Blog

2006

Directed by Steve Zallian

Based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
Written by Steven Zallian / Robert Penn Warren

Soundtrack by James Horner
Music supervision by T. Bone Burnett

MAIN CAST
Sean Penn – Willie Stark
Jude Law – Jack Burden
James Gandolfino – Tiny Duffy
Anthony Hopkins – Judge Irwin
Patricia Clarkson – Sadie Burke
Kate Winslet- Anne Stanton
Mark Ruffalo – Adam Stanton
Jackie Earle Haley- Sugar Boy
Kathy Baker- Mrs Burden
Talia Balsam – Lucy Stark

It was an Oscar winning 1949 film (Best Picture), based on Robert Penn Warren’s Pullitzer Prize novel.

The novel was on two of my third year university reading lists: 20th Century American Literature for American Studies, The One Party State (Fascism & Communism) for Political Studies. In the latter it was because Willie Stark was a thinly disguised portrait of Huey Long, ‘The Kingfish’, the Governor of Louisiana (1928 to 1932) and a US Senator until 1935. We studied Huey Long as a proto-Fascist. He was not as racist as Father Coughlan, but like Mussolini boasted that he built the schools, roads and hospitals, and he did. Penn Warren conflated the story.

The 1949 film had Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, and John Ireland as Jack Burden, the journalist from an old Louisiana family who becomes Stark’s right hand man. It sticks with the 1928 to 1935 timeline of the novel.

We saw the 2006 film in the cinema, then bought the DVD, so we’d seen it twice. Happily seventeen years without seeing it rendered it fresh in our eyes. We felt the events of 2024 made a film about a screaming, blackmailing, corrupt demagogue appropriate. I wanted to see it again because I was disappointed with it previously, in spite of the cast.

The first major change was that the film was transposed from 1928 to 1935 to 1948 to 1955. In other words everything is twenty years later. I’m not sure this works. It is no longer the Great Depression, in fact the US Economy was booming. Louisiana was no longer bereft of roads, hospitals and schools in reality. However race relations would be right at the forefront in the 1950s, and they’re not. Stark uses the N-word, but also appeals to black people. The clothes and cars look marvellous.

I’ll try and do this without plot spoiling.

Jack Burden is a news reporter who takes an interest in Willie Stark, an idealistic small-town lawyer and parish treasurer. Tiny Duffy, a fat-cat state political leader Burden knows, urges Stark to run for governor. Burden was brought up by his godfather, Judge Irwin, a former state attorney general, while his best friend, Dr. Adam Stanton, and his sister Anne Stanton are the children of a former governor. Burdon has always carried a torch for Anne and there are flashbacks to their teenage swims (no alligators though). Burden travels as a reporter on Stark’s campaign for governor.

Duffy’s strategist Sadie Burke tells them that Duffy is using Stark to split his party’s vote and thus allow the opposing rich men’s party to win (they probably mean Republicans). They tell Stark, who begins to give intense and charismatic speeches to the poor ‘hicks.’

Stark has also gone from teetotal to heavy drinking. He wins the election with fervent appeals to populist chanting ‘Nail them up!’ It’s hard to believe any American politician would stoop to rabble rousing violent chants. Or rather it was before Trump. Duffy becomes lieutenant governor to keep him onside. Stark recruits Burden to work for him as an adviser.

Stark delivers on many of his new projects. Judge Irwin had approved of Stark but changes his mind as power corrupts Stark, and decides to support an investigation into corruption in the new expenditure.

There are flash forwards / backs to driving to Irwin’s house to persuade / threaten / bribe him. Irwin is intractable and unafraid. Sugar Boy, Stark’s bodyguard / driver looks like an Orc and is no more pleasant.

Then Stark has Burden convince the idealistic doctor, Adam Stanton, to head a new public hospital. Burden knows Stark is screwing Sadie, and a succession of exotic dancers. He does’t know he’s screwing Anne too. Anne was receiving funds for the college where she lectures. Then he finds out. We find out that he failed Anne himself.

Stark demands that Burden seek information on the judge to be used against him. With much research effort, Jack discovers evidence of corruption that Irwin used to get his appointment as judge twenty years before, leading to a colleague committing suicide. No plot spoiler here, but Irwin had been kinder to Burden than anyone in his life. But Burden realises that EVERY politician is at basis, corrupt (2024 note. Right on! It’s true). Adam is told that Stark is using the hospital project to rob the state and is framing him in the process. True? We don’t know. This leads to a breakdown and the tragic ending. The death toll of major characters is Shakespearean.

Some reviews thought Jude Law too laid back, laconic. I disagree. The role is a non-participant observer. All his life, Burden has been an observer not a doer. This comes out strongly in the scene with Anne where he declines to carry the sex scene to its conclusion. I thought Jude Law captured that sense of distance. Then the character is someone who gives up his most loved father-figure into the hands of his enemies. The role of Burden, an observer, narrator, a catalyst, but not the central figure in dramatic events is a viewpoint Scott Fitzgerald used, and I’ve used myself.

An A list cast. So, what went wrong? Accents were a major issue. Three major British stars? They did better than some of the Americans. British RP to Southern may be easier than New Joisy to Southern. In one way, weaker accents may aid comprehension. Authentic rural Louisiana (which no one does) is hard.

QUOTE:

Overthought, overwrought and thuddingly underwhelming, this high-profile misfire makes a congealed gumbo out of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-winning 1946 novel and the Oscar-winning 1949 movie that followed it, sinking a classy cast in the goo. Sean Penn is dynamite as Willie Stark, the Louisiana politician (modelled on Huey Long) who makes it to the governor’s mansion on the votes of his fellow “hicks,” but the film’s fuse just won’t light. But in updating this tale of how and why power corrupts, from the Depression to the 1950s, writer-director Steve Zaillian replaces grit with grandiosity, shooting Willie’s speeches like Nazi rallies. Miscasting also hurts. Jude Law in the pivotal role of Jack Burden, the newspaperman who works for Willie and loses his soul in the bargain, never looks as persuasively damaged as John Ireland did in the first movie. The fake Southern accent also defeats him, as it does Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins and especially James Gandolfini, who all figure in Willie’s rise and fall. And New Orleans-born Patricia Clarkson, who delivers solidly as Willie’s press wrangler, brings an authenticity to her role that emphasizes what the others sorely lack. But why go on? Talented people can screw up because, unlike hacks, they take big risks. This time the risk doesn’t pay off.
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone 2006

MUSIC

The James Horner soundtrack is still in print and available on CD. This may say more about the popularity of James Horner than the film. The T-Bone Burnett selections are snippets and aren’t available. I also thought Howlin’ Wolf unlikely in a New Orleans bar.

We see the scene when Willie records Every Man A King, the song that Huey Long wrote and recorded. Randy Newman covered it for Good Old Boys, probably his greatest work. The last three tracks are all connected.

Louisiana 1927, is about the flood the aftermath of which helped bring Huey Long to power. Then comes Randy Newman’s version of Long’s Every Man A King. Finally we get Kingfish:

Everybody gather ’round
Loosen up your suspenders
Hunker down on the ground
I’m a cracker
And you are too
But don’t I take good care of you

Who built the highway to Baton Rouge?
Who put up the hospital and built you schools?
Who looks after shit-kickers like you?
The Kingfish do

Who took on the Standard Oil men
And whipped their ass
Just like he promised he’d do?
Ain’t no Standard Oil men gonna run this state
Gonna be run by little folks like me and you

I’m amazed they didn’t seek to use it, though Randy Newman would not be easy to negotiate with. The 1990s edition of The Band performed a cover of Kingfish live in New Orleans and in Japan. I’m pretty sure Levon Helm didn’t see it as ironic, and then I’m not sure of whether Randy Newman is 100% ironic either. All three versions of the story, the novel and both films, bring up the question of some grudging admiration for Huey Long / Willie Stark. As older Italians used to say of Mussolini, ‘Yes, OK, I know, but he made the trains run on time.’

POSTSCRIPT:

Life paths. Around the timeI read the book, I was accepted for a Ph.D at Tulane University in New Orleans. A friend returned from studying in the USA to warn me of the extra maths and language side courses and the heavy teaching commitment. I was persuaded to go to East Anglia instead as a much easier option. New Orleans is an alternative life that never happened. I have been there since. I loved it.