Oliver Stone has long been synonymous with political passion projects, but his latest film, W., may be his most ambitious effort yet, if only because of how quickly the thing came together and got made. Now the serio-comic biopic about our sitting president is about to hit theaters, less than ten months after anyone had heard of its inception, and it’s getting a number of favorable reviews, will possibly rule the box office this weekend, and could even garner an Oscar nomination for Josh Brolin, who portrays the man with the titular initial, George W. Bush.
But not all political passion projects are quite as successful as W. is expected to be. Some such films have been banned, while some have simply failed to acquire an audience on more democratic grounds, whether in terms of box office, critical or awards recognition. Yet regardless of the reception of a political passion project, either at the time of release (or intended release) or decades later, it may be regarded as an achievement merely for being made, because it can be a difficult task for a filmmaker, no matter how famous or powerful, to completely, without compromise, express his or her politics using such a collaborative and populist form of art as cinema.
We’ve put together a list of 10 political passion projects that were (and are) successful on both levels. They’ve been embraced by a wide audience, a majority of critics and/or the Academy, and they also manage to be as uncompromising in their political passion as is possible in Hollywood.
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940)
For his first “talkie”, Chaplin took on Hitler and the Nazis when it was still taboo for American media to do so. And it became his biggest hit ever in spite of its controversial subject matter. Considering one of the major problems with W. is reportedly Oliver Stone’s inability to mix the serious scenes with the comic, he might have benefitted from looking again at this film, one of the greatest political satires of all time.
Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941)
Capra had already made a number of greater films with political subject matter, but this was pretty much his ultimate passion project, a culmination of themes he’d worked with on similar films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But as successful as those films were in terms of Capra’s political expression, and as free as the filmmaker seemed to be throughout his illustrious career at Columbia Pictures, he always felt at least a little stifled by studio head Harry Cohn, and so with this, his first semi-independent project (co-produced and distributed by Warner Bros.), he had the most creative control yet. Unfortunately, the result wasn’t nearly as popular as his past films and the film is also not nearly as tight a work. However, more than 65 years later, it’s still one of the best displays of a filmmaker attempting to work out and express his political ideals in a mainstream film.
Wilson (Henry King, 1944)
Long before Oliver Stone and political documentarians made it more common and acceptable to make a movie about disliked politicians, producer and 20th Century Fox founder Darryl F. Zanuck developed this passion project about his favorite president, Woodrow Wilson. And the result would seem to have been a great success based on its reception by critics and the Academy Awards (nominated for 10, it won 5 Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay), yet it was a terrible, terrible flop at the box office, apparently because the public didn’t like or care about Wilson as much as Zanuck did. And legend has it that Zanuck was so embarrassed by the failure that he forbade his staff to ever mention its title again. Despite it’s Oscar success, it is unfortunately unavailable on DVD.
The Green Berets (Ray Kellogg, John Wayne, John Gaddis and Mervyn LeRoy, 1968)
Regardless of whether or not you agree with John Wayne’s politics, you have to give the guy some respect for making a stand with this film, which displays his support for the Vietnam War. It was a bold move for anybody, even one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, to dare go up against the zeitgeist of the times. And of course it was and is very much hated because of its heavy handed pro-war message.
Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981)
Beatty had already shown himself to be something of a politically minded celebrity, and he would go on to a greater reputation for being a liberal actor/filmmaker, but here with his first solo directing effort, he made an ambitious epic about the American communist John Reed and released it in a year that ushered in the most conservatively materialistic decade of the 20th century. Despite the political climate of the country, though, it was relatively successful at the box office, and it went on to recieve 12 Oscar nominations, of which it won 3, including a Best Director trophy for Beatty.
Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992)
Whether or not you believe it should have been nominated for more Oscars or if it was politically and racially ignored, the success of Malcolm X, both financially and culturally, was a terrific achievement for Spike Lee, who had made and has made less ambitious political passion projects before and since, some even arguably better than this one.
Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995)
Robbins had already begun making political statement films a few years earlier with Bob Roberts, but this film, which he also produced, is the greater passion project. It may occasionally put off supporters of the death penalty, but those performances by Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon (who won an Oscar) simply can not be ignored.
The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004)
You can’t think about passion projects without this film immediately coming to mind –– and not just because it has the word passion right there in the title. As for the political part, as much as some of us would prefer not to think of religion as being a part of politics, it certainly is, and both the marketing and reception of Gibson’s film were very much from political perspectives, possibly even more so than from straight religious perspectives.
Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005)
Perhaps the best cinematic celebration of journalism since All the President’s Men, Clooney’s film is also possibly the classiest political passion project since guys like Beatty, Robbins and Clooney decided to go behind the camera and express their ideals.
Darfur Now (Ted Braun, 2007)
At a time when famous people like George Clooney and the double duty of “Brangelina” get equal respect and flak for being so political, it’s refreshing to see this documentary defend celebrity action while also examining the film’s specific cause. Produced by and featuring Don Cheadle (and also featuring Clooney), the doc is not technically the actor’s project as much as it is Braun’s, yet due to Cheadle’s passionate interest in the Darfur issue and his involvement with and in the film, and because he’s the biggest name on the production, it can certainly be accepted as equally his political effort.
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