The stuff of thriller fictionBy John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
"Pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes." John Ruskin.
Rarely outside of Morgan Spurlock or Michael Moore have I enjoyed a documentary as much as I have Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer. Filled with sex and power, it presents the gamut of intrigues worthy of tragedy or soap opera--never dull, almost always entertaining. Cheesy and improbable, it is the story of the New York State attorney general who rose in the early years of the first decade to become governor and after a year to resign because he was caught using a call-girl service.
Having sex with a prostitute is hardly worthy of Sophocles' plays, but it is richly ironic when the governor prosecuted the very services he used.
Writer/director Alex Gibney has fashioned this doc as a low-key support for the theory that Eliot Spitzer's enemies helped bring him down. To Spitzer's credit, he attributes his fall to himself with a hubris befitting Greek tragedy. Gibney's interview of Spitzer is first-rate journalism with a willing subject and reasonable questions.
Irony abounds: Gibney does an admirable job showing how Spitzer could have been the first Jewish president?he's that gifted as a hard-charging, ethical avatar until Gibney explores his fatal decision to cheat on one of the loveliest political wives this side of Elizabeth Edwards. As always, unanswered questions remain about the marital circumstances that could drive him to pay for attractive hookers. However, the off-center idea of the FBI probing into Spitzer's private life is absurd anyway when terrorists and corrupt bankers are bringing the world down.
Until the overly-long disquisition on the call-girl industry and lurid shots of the young women, the treatment of Spitzer's "war" with Wall Street and giants like AIG is the stuff of thriller fiction, except it's real. In that part of the doc, Gibney is historically spot on about the beginnings of the Great Recession.
Irony again reigns when the very knight to fight these corrupt forces is neutered by the most common failing of all mortals?hubris.
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com