Robert de Niro in "Casino"
Film Friday
In today’s post I share a smart cinema parallel (from Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine) between the Mitt Romney-Newt Gingrich battle and a Martin Scorsese film. And then I promise to leave campaign politics for a while.
Here’s Chait:
The Republican primary battle has come to resemble the love triangle in the movie Casino. The GOP electorate is Sharon Stone, torn between wealthy, calculating casino boss Robert DeNiro, whom she recognizes it is in her interest to marry, and James Woods, the sleazy pimp ex-boyfriend she can’t quite leave behind. She keeps rebuffing his marriage proposals, insisting she’s not in love with him, but he’s undeterred. “I’m realistic. I can accept that,” he says. “But, you know, what is… What is love anyway? It’s a — it’s a mutual respect.”
Chait notes the resemblance with Romney, who he says is “accepting and rational about the voters’ lack of true feelings for him,” even though he can’t understand why anyone would fall for a sleazebag like Gingrich:
Asked when he thought his party would fall in love with him, [Romney] said: “I think the Republican Party will fall in love with our nominee.”
To which Chait sarcastically replies, “When you have that base of respect, those feelings will grow in time. Right?”
Chait doesn’t mention how the film’s ending resembles the “take no prisoners” tenor the primary has taken. In Casino, the mob’s casino operation crumbles from the infighting.
But Chait does use the DeNiro-Stone marriage to predict the future of a Romney-GOP relationship:
Ultimately, Romney’s money will probably carry the day – either in Florida or sometime after. But the marriage will end in screaming and tears.
Addendum
Here’s another fun film allusion by New York Times columnist Charles Blow:
Luckily for Mitt Romney, Gingrich’s surge in Florida may be fizzling. A Quinnipiac poll of likely Republican voters in that state found that Romney leads Gingrich by nine percentage points. If that holds, Romney and the establishment Republicans will have dodged a bullet like Neo in The Matrix. A Romney loss in Florida would call his candidacy into question and send the party scrambling for a more attractive replacement.
