Trouble with Truth in an era of slippery facts
Truth’s righteous title is a provocative sell in an era of flexible historical narratives. With Steve Jobs, Lincoln, Argo and other recent dramas redefining factual accuracy, why should we trust any movie?
Curiouser still is the emotional approach to the film’s journalistic crisis taken by writer/director James Vanderbilt, whose screenplay for David Fincher’s Zodiac was a marvel of deductive reasoning.
Sure, the argument goes in this gripping account, insufficient diligence caused the 2004 “Memogate” scandal that destroyed the careers of CBS 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather.
In their zeal to expose alleged favouritism, goldbricking and skulduggery concerning then U.S. President George W. Bush’s military service record, they put too much faith in a military memo of dubious origin and a flawed source who later recanted. But weren’t their hearts in the right place?
“They do not get to smack us just for asking the question!” Cate Blanchett rails in the role of Mapes, whose memoirs shape the script, as bloggers and other media tear into 60 Minutes.
CBS executives, perhaps too hastily, responded to the uproar with an embarrassing corporate climbdown that resulted in dismissal for Mapes and unwanted retirement for Rather.
Unfortunately for Mapes, Rather and Truth, this wasn’t about the asking of the question, it was about the telling of the story.
It’s not enough for a journalist to assert, as a frustrated cartoon char- acter does to Bugs Bunny, “I don’t know how yoose done it, rabbit, but I know yoose done it!”
You have to prove that the rabbit did it, which 60 Minutes infamously did not, no matter how loudly Mapes and Rather attest to the story’s veracity. This doesn’t prevent Truth from succeeding as engrossing drama, which it happily does.
Nobody does the aggrieved party better than Blanchett, who could play the title tragedians in any smart recasting of King Lear or Hamlet.
Redford delivers a solid performance as a humbled Rather, even though he doesn’t disappear into the role, the way Johnny Depp does in Black Mass.
Redford actually summons more sympathy than Blanchett, especially in a barroom scene where Rather is humiliated — by his friend Mapes, of all people — for his 1980s affectation of ending reports with “Courage.”
Faring less well in this ensemble picture built like a two-hander are members of the 60 Minutes research team, played by Topher Grace, Elisabeth Moss and Dennis Quaid, who get too little screen time to fully register. And you have to wonder what first-time director Vanderbilt had in mind by casting Stacy Keach as the source of the dubious memo.
Keach is a fine actor, but he radiates insincerity — witness his greedy neighbour role in Nebraska — and the BS meter of any reputable journalist should have redlined when encountering a character as shady as the one he plays here.
The irony of Truth is that it requires no stretch of the imagination at all to imagine that the son of a wealthy Texas family would be able to finagle his way out of serving in the Vietnam War. But imagining is not proving, as Bugs Bunny knows and 60 Minutes should have known.
CBS executives, perhaps too hastily, responded to the uproar with a corporate climbdown