Review of Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains

Demme's doc is an interesting look at the crossroads of ideology and punditry

by Zachary Wigon 

Living under the administration that currently occupies the White House, it could be difficult to remember that some Presidents have had excellent grips on the minutiae of policy details. Bill Clinton did – it’s one of the reasons why he was so beloved – but oftentimes, it seems as if a grip on such minutiae is unnecessary in order to hold the highest executive office. Additionally, a sense of pragmatism and political positioning tends to trump genuine belief in ideology, and all of this together leads to a highly cynical view of our leaders. Jimmy Carter’s career has been an interesting one. Many ex-Presidents tend to fade into the shadows, but Carter has been as dynamic and newsworthy a former President as this country has ever seen. Perhaps it’s due, in part, to the fact that his actual Presidential tenure was underwhelming for so many. Perhaps he feels that he has something to prove. Perhaps, however, it’s something as genuine as a belief in “doing the right thing,” so to speak. Unless President Carter is a master of putting up – and holding up – the façade of a genuinely concerned man who believes in something as naïve as making the world a better place, “doing the right thing” does truly come across as Carter’s motivation in Jimmy Carter Man From Plains. Jonathan Demme’s new documentary is a fly-on-the-wall look at Carter’s tour for his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which, as we are told so often by pundits who interview Carter throughout the film, has raised an enormous amount of “controversy.” Nevermind that the controversy seems to spring more from the usage of that word as a descriptor than from anything that actually happens outside of a news studio. That being said, the film does cover the protests of Carter’s tour by various groups. The documentary succeeds in being cinematic insofar as Demme’s preoccupation with electronic screens and audio/visual interfaces comes across as an aesthetic pillar of the film. During one TV interview, rather than shooting Carter himself, Demme photographs the image of Carter that is put up in the studio’s editing control room. In an interview with Larry King, Demme photographs Carter’s image as it is broadcasted in a bar in New York. To see Carter himself in so much of the film, and then see him photographed via these mediating mechanisms, gives the audience an idea of what is lost in the transfer from “real life” to the media’s presentation of “reality.” On the screens we see him in, Carter takes on a spectral, ghostly quality, and looks weaker than he does in the rest of the documentary. It’s an eerie effect that is the film’s strongest point. Perhaps Carter only looks weak in comparison to the pundits who host him on their talk shows, who are both bullish and misinformed. Wolf Blitzer comes off as clueless to Carter’s ideas or the situation in the Middle East itself. Larry King simply parrots the comments made by Alan Dershowitz regarding Carter’s book rather than making any insights of his own (we are left to assume he has none). The vast majority of the interviewers of Carter clearly have not read his book. Indeed, Demme’s film could be read as a statement on the dearth of scholarly research and journalism in existence amongst contemporary news media figures. A damning portrait of the American news media as such is certainly flirted with in this film, but Demme is too preoccupied with his subject to be using him as a means to the end of a different film. Displaying the character of President Carter is Demme’s primary goal, and it is clearly such throughout the film. Demme’s editing precision in bringing out Carter’s trademark qualities (his folksy charm, his humble wisdom), along with the self-preparation that Carter himself undergoes in order to present his persona to the world, leads to an overwhelmingly narrow portrait of the former President. It most certainly is an entertaining one, but one can’t help but wish that a greater latitude of Carter’s personality was explored. Documentary filmmakers often talk about how difficult it is to get their subjects to truly “open up” to them. This is difficult to get any person to do; for someone as conditioner in the realm of personal appearance as a former President, it must be damned near impossible. The film is worthy of one’s attentions for the light in which it depicts contemporary American media, a world that is continually criticized from afar, but never from as close-in as Demme gets with this film. Every time an idiotic question is asked, every time an incorrect statement is made, the audience flinches along with President Carter. Despite this wall of ignorance he is confronting, Carter continues his own political crusade, for better or for worse; it is here that he, as an emotional figure, is most compelling. ---- ZACHARY WIGON

Posted on 10/28/07 by: FC Scribes 07:06 PM