The Front Runner (2018)

Directed by: Jason Reitman | 113 minutes | drama, biography | Actors: Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, JK Simmons, Mark O’Brien, Molly Ephraim, Chris Coy, Alex Karpovsky, Josh Brener, Tommy Dewey, Kaitlyn Dever, Oliver Cooper, Jenna Kanell, RJ Brown, Alfred Molina

Ah, those ‘good old days’ when politicians could still cheat undisturbed without any journalistic interference. “Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) once warned us that we would see a lot of women coming in and out of his hotel room, but asked us not to write about it, and we didn’t,” said one of the senior journalists halfway through. The Front Runner’. Serious journalists should steer clear of gossip and backbiting, the adage ran around 1988, blinded to the fact that political reality had long since assumed the contours of a 24-hour entertainment industry, and dated requests like LBJ’s seemed a ludicrous utopia. ‘The Front Runner’ highlights three dramatic weeks in the life of a presidential candidate who became one of the entertainment industry’s first victims.

Charismatic, idealistic and attractive too, nothing seems to stand in the way of Senator Gary Hart (an excellent Hugh Jackman) on his way to the White House. His policies are in great demand, young voters are blind to his ideals, and America needs a breath of fresh air after the Reagan years in the vein of John F. Kennedy.

Yet Hart is not completely infallible: the best man is so fond of his privacy that he does not want to reveal anything about his personal life. Quite difficult if you are the man of the hour. Not so surprising, it turns out later. Despite a long marriage to his wife Lee (Vera Farmiga), Hart is more than once sensitive to the other pleasures of life, especially the feminine beauty that populates the average campaign rally more than once.

With a press that has little interest in this ‘gossip journalism’, Hart doesn’t seem to have much to worry about. Until a bunch of bumbling journalists in Miami stumble upon the story of an alleged love affair. It presents the self-proclaimed serious press with an ethical dilemma: ignore this personal ‘slander’ or jump on the bandwagon? Hart’s campaign manager Dixon (JK Simmons) has other worries: is it enough to feed the mistress to the tabloid’s hungry wolf pack, or has Hart’s career been shattered by the leak of this story?

Anyone familiar with recent American history will probably know what happened to Gary Hart, and in that light it’s not surprising that director Jason Reitman (“Juno”, “Tully”) saw an interesting “tragedy” in his story. A senator with the political talents for the highest office, but also someone who abhors the accompanying need for openness. In fact, Gary Hart unwittingly ushered in an era in which politics continued to evolve into a glorified entertainment industry, and the personal lives of politicians also became an important revenue model for the more serious press. To culminate thirty years later in an American president who is regarded as the ultimate bastard child of the same entertainment industry.

In that respect, ‘The Front Runner’ is an incredibly interesting political-journalistic drama, and Gary Hart’s story is ideally suited to reflect current reality. But Reitman’s excellent energetic storytelling style, excellent acting and fine-grained camera work mean that the film also has plenty to offer beyond the philosophical reflections.

Towards the end of the film, Dixon once again sighs that Hart simply does not want to understand that politicians have long been in a Hollywood-like setting. Gary Hart realized too late that the personal had long since become political, inadvertently ushering in his own Icarus flight into the journalistic and political abyss. What if this story had taken place thirty years later? Then Gary Hart probably ‘just’ lived in the White House and the whole affair could always have been dismissed as fake news.