Tonight, PBS’s Frontline will be showing Karl Rove – The Architect, a documentary on George W. Bush’s chief political strategist.
But if the New York Times review of this documentary is even half-right, it’s astonishingly bad.
“Karl Rove – The Architect,” a documentary on PBS tonight, spins a story of astounding stupidity out of a career it insists is among the most influential in American politics. This is unpardonable. To hint at so much intrigue without dramatizing any of it – by hardly offering evidence – is a dereliction of duty; it suggests that even the most tendentious account of Mr. Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, as a redeemer or a rascal might have done his story greater justice.
In harmony with dark synthesizer chords, the narrator speaks in haunted tones about Mr. Rove’s “40-year plan to remake the American political landscape.” (Mr. Rove is 54.) Talking heads confirm that “Karl Rove wants a permanent Republican majority,” “His hand was in all of it,” and – more scare chords – “He’s the god inside the machine.”
He sure sounds terrifying. And indeed, we do learn (shield the kids) that Mr. Rove, from an early age, was a Republican. He liked politics. And he worked to get Republicans elected.
Really, it’s chilling.
The narrator mentioned above is the great Will Lyman, the voice of Frontline since 1982, whose “terrifying” baritone is usually enough to convince me to watch. The review continues…
…the program takes its title from Mr. Bush’s 2004 victory speech, in which he thanked various advisers, including “the architect, Karl Rove.” This workaday figure of speech is treated as an all-revealing slip of the tongue, and the movie goes into overdrive trying to make architecture seem sinister.
Here things get especially comical. Ham-handed still lifes of an architect’s paraphernalia – including blueprints, compasses, graph paper – appear as a metonym for the title character. These arrangements are an embarrassment to documentary filmmaking.
The most amateurish among them features a crucifix and a photograph of Mr. Bush on top of a red-brown book, embossed with the words “Holy Bible.” Nearby, in the upper right-hand corner of the frame, has been placed a photo of Al Gore, looking chagrined. In the left-hard corner is the scene’s sole black and white image: Karl Rove, looking into the middle distance. All this stuff sits atop blueprints. Someone has got to be kidding.
So this crude demonization is “unpardonable,” “amatuerish,” “ham-handed,” and an “embarrasment to documentary filmmaking.”
Is any chance the CBC will resist the urge to spend my tax dollars to air this? History would suggest otherwise.
(If you’re like me, when reading the NYT review, you didn’t know the exact meaning of the word metonym. Well, let me help you out. Dictionary.com defines metonym as “A word used in metonymy.” You’re welcome.)