The War Room

I first saw "The War Room" back when I was a Democrat in the middle nineties and it struck me then as an excellent documentary. My initial assessment remains accurate today even though the politicizing of James Carville now repulses me. This documentary fulfills every expectation. It takes a snapshot at an isolated point in time and conveys a bevy of information about an era. We discover (or re-discover as the case may be) Bill Clinton along with the folks who orchestrated his 1992 campaign. "The War Room" also is an excellent primary source document and a fine piece of history. It remains topical as some of the same figures graced Senator Clinton's run for the Democratic Party nomination in 2008. As many of these magnates were a part of the Clinton Administration (albeit briefly), the movie yields considerable insight on an era--perhaps far more than the future president would have liked. D.A. Pennebaker is highly esteemed by his peers and we see here that this is for solid reasons. I also appreciated the filmmakers later-day observations which serve as an intro to this DVD.

The makers of this film had access to Bill Clinton's campaign war room for his successful 1992 bid for the presidency. Yet, they wasted the opportunity that access provided to them.

The tag-line for the movie is, "they changed the way campaigns are won." "They," in this statement, refers to lead campaign strategist, James Carville, and campaign communications director George Stephanopoulos. The statement derives from one that Carville is seen making late in the film. He tells his staff that "we changed how campaigns are run."

Now, if the movie was about how Carville and Stephanopoulos changed how American election campaigns are run, that would be terrifically interesting story, documenting a significant development. Yet, the movie is merely the footage that was shot, edited together with shots of newspaper headlines that provide the timeline, the continuity. There is not even the slightest attempt to say that up until that point, campaigns were run this way, but Carville and Stephanopoulos ran things differently, and the changes they have made have been adopted by other campaign teams.

I find it telling that, at the beginning of the DVD playback, the film makers comment on their work, and one of them describes how, at the outset, they were shooting proceedings and happened to focus on Carville because he was the most interesting character in the room, and it was only later that they learned he was the most senior campaign staffer in the room. That shows how little thought and research preceded the filming.

The film is a very interesting inside look at the core campaign group during the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. Well worth a look.

In the middle of the 2008 race for the White House, the War Room provides great insight to the inner workings of not just a modern campaign, but into the first Clinton campaign. In many ways this campaign changed the way politics was conducted as much as Karl Rove would eight years later. What makes the movie great is the access to the most inner workings of the Clinton machine, giving not just a fly on the wall view, but a very human one. Perhaps the main weakness, is that no graphics or numerical information is given - surely the hallmark of modern politics. Also it could have broadened a bit to show debates and other such footage. Still, well worth watching. Who knows, a sequel coming soon?

This is a great film to see what is conducted behind the scenes to win a presidential campaign. Great film for students to see two political campaign managers at work. This film also showed these two guy's human side and at the same time funny.