A Good Story Buried in a Mediocre Movie
Nearly 40 years after its release, the gold standard for films about journalism continues to be All the President's Men, and that's because it hasn't lost a bit of relevancy or energy. With a compelling true story and unparalleled talents in front of and behind the camera, the film will endure with nary a drop in its potency.
Truth, the adaptation of Mary Mapes' book by writer/director James Vanderbilt, chronicles the 2004 Killian documents controversy that led to the discrediting of a 60 Minutes Wednesday edition report that called into question President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. The film follows the formation of that report as well as the fallout that included the firing of the segment's producer, Mary Mapes, and the resignation by Dan Rather from his position as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Though the reporting and subject of the reporting in Truth is nowhere near as inherently compelling as that in All the President's Men, the film still offers a wholly engaging story of a turning point in modern television journalism, and the film itself features a crack team of talent: Cate Blanchett gives a very good performance as the fiery Mapes, Vanderbilt wrote the great and journalistically-minded Zodiac, and the filmic incarnation of Bob Woodward himself, Robert Redford, plays Rather.
And yet the film rarely manages to be compelling. Too often Vanderbilt, who makes his directorial debut with this film, wants to turn Mapes' story into a romantic ode to what journalism should be. With an overbearing score by Brian Tyler, some scenes play as wannabes of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom—a show which itself is imperfect, but does a better job of tilting at windmills—but the problem with such idealism here is that the story behind Truth is one that shouldn't be rose-colored. To Vanderbilt's credit as a writer, the facts of the story seem to be laid out fairly in the film, giving the audience the choice of whether or not Mapes, Rather, and their researchers were wrong. However, his decisions as a director—the use of the aforementioned overdone score, a sad montage of people at CBS News caught up in the controversy, and a hero's sendoff for Rather—are heavy-handed and cloying. Truth's supporting cast of Elisabeth Moss, Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Bruce Greenwood, and Stacy Keach is mostly saddled with half-baked characters, save for Keach as a key source for the report and Greenwood as the President of CBS News. Moss gets the shortest end of the stick, with a character who barely registers as an important member of the research team.
Another element of the true story that is occasionally addressed in the film is the possibility that CBS was leaning particularly hard on Mapes and Rather because its corporate parent Viacom needed to be in the good graces of a Republican White House and Congress facing an election in less than two months. This may be the most controversial aspect of the story, and the "big speech" regarding CBS's possible motivations comes from Grace's character, the most outspokenly liberal member of the research team, when he's confronting a CBS News executive. It's a trope of the genre that ultimately doesn't work here. Whether or not the corporate pressures were the cause of Mapes and Rather's parting with CBS, or whether or not political forces were behind the story's active invalidation in the media, the fact remains that it's an aspect of this moment in the history of CBS News that isn't as thoroughly explored in the film as it could have been, becoming more of a footnote in Truth than a crucial part of the story.
Despite its shortcomings, many aspects of Truth do work well. Blanchett turns in a memorable and nuanced performance as Mapes, and throughout the film is the sole consistently magnetic force that keeps the film at least mildly engaging, if not more so. Meanwhile Redford captures Rather to a certain degree, and manages to disappear into his character, if only slightly. Vanderbilt shows his strengths as a writer in the scenes that feel the most paired-down and true to the real people whose story he's telling. One scene in particular that is directed with restraint and played to perfection by Blanchett occurs late in the film when Mapes is called before an investigative panel at CBS. She outlines exactly why memos her team obtained are unlikely to be forgeries (the key charge against their report), and the fight in Mapes is palpable. The scene exemplifies the kind of film Truth should have been throughout. Regardless of whether Mary Mapes was right or wrong, she's standing by her work because she believes it to be correct, and that commitment—not swelling music nor applauding colleagues—is what makes her admirable.
Truth will have a hard time finding an audience outside of moviegoers who are also fervent political junkies. James Vanderbilt's film plays more like a mediocre TV movie than the sweeping salute to journalism it wants to be. Too much of Truth rings false to be fully engaging, which is a shame not only because of the talent involved, but because the elements of the film that feel artificial are not the facts of the story the film is based on. Vanderbilt's ham-fisted direction of key scenes leaves you feeling manipulated by the filmmakers rather than engaged in a story, true or otherwise. The best films based on true stories have a finely tuned script in the hands of a director who knows when to exercise restraint and let those compelling events and characters captivate the audience on their own. Truth has that wonderfully engaging story, but the movie made around it is nowhere near as rich.