Vice (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

From the awesome writer/director of The Big Short (and lots of other things I refuse to watch), here comes a more somber, more understandable, and more ballsy second feature destined to score well in awards season.

Vice tells the story of Dick Cheney, from his troubled youth through his turns in the political spotlight -- or, rather, in the wings. The notoriously enigmatic Cheney is played by the no less enigmatic Christian Bale, an unexpected match made in heaven made believable by Bale's chameleonic performance. He grumbles and glares through the film, whether as an alcoholic Yale dropout or as (arguably) the most powerful vice president in U.S. history. Cheney's personal life is dramatized here -- for better or worse -- but something about it rings hauntingly true. This is not the Machiavellian tragedy of House of Cards, but it's damn close and all the more haunting because it really happened.

And while the story is a more conventional biopic than The Big Short, embracing dramedy in its depiction of real people and real moments in history, it features a few of the performative devices that made that previous film so memorable. This story is narrated by Kurt, an apparently fictional veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, who ends up providing Cheney's replacement heart at the end, in March 2012. It's this kind of dark irony that burns brightest here, not eliciting loud laughs but content with making the audience squirm. Who (or what) is really the object of humor here?

Further, unlike The Big Short, which required our fairly detailed knowledge about the housing crisis and complicated economic vocabulary, Vice works by inviting us into the private life of one of our most mysterious leaders. Whether true or not, we sit engrossed in seeing the man tick. We can view the film as a family tragedy, as Lynne Cheney (a magnificent Amy Adams) struggles to keep her power-mad husband and daughters together, one of whom is lesbian (Alison Pill) and the other who denounces same-sex marriage in her own power bid. We can view the film as an homage to a man who successfully played the system time and again, desperate for power and taking crisis after crisis as opportunities for personal gain. We can view the film as a hilarious portrait of a man doomed to love nothing so much as power and the damaging effect it has on the world that allowed him to take. Think that's too much? Check out the not-quite-explicit ways the film paints Cheney as indirectly responsible for the polarizing of American politics, the corruption of Trump's America, and of course the birth of ISIS.

Maybe I'm just not smart enough, but I had trouble figuring out when to laugh, groan, or shudder. Tonally the film felt fairly specific, but my limited knowledge (and awe at the lead players' performances) wasn't able to fully grasp the plodding pace or weighty themes. I expected a rollicking comedy and got a more intense biopic, which is lovely but of a decidedly different genre. The narrative devices and playfulness here are notably hostile, and I couldn't help but feel that the hostility was partly aimed at the audience. An amazing achievement, but one you really have to be prepared for.