I could listen to Peter Capaldi abuse these people for another hour. Somebody is about to have a very bad day, described to them in language I could not produce with a week’s notice, and he sounds annoyed that he has to explain it at all. “Climb the mountain of conflict” is about the best his minister can manage. I love that nobody can just ask what the hell that’s supposed to mean and move on. He’s said it near a microphone. Now everyone has to do something about it.
The Iraq connection is obvious, but the office behavior is so familiar that I don’t spend much time decoding who is supposed to be whom. You could put these people in charge of a software company and they’d still be fighting over who got invited to the meeting. Once they’re in, nobody wants to leave. Iannucci learned during his Washington research that Madeleine Albright taught her staff how to last through a six-hour meeting without a bathroom break. They called it Bladder Diplomacy. If you left the room, you lost influence. Imagine getting that far in your career and discovering that your next professional development opportunity is holding it.
Gandolfini called the Pentagon and asked to visit for a few days. He got a haircut there and took four-star generals to lunch, where he asked whether they’d ever killed anybody. According to Iannucci, some needed time to think about their answer.
For all the speed, the film never feels like the actors are waiting for their turn to deliver a joke. Iannucci kept the writers on set and rewrote as they went, throwing out jokes that sounded too carefully written. Two cameras followed the actors, and he let the compositions get messy, even leaving ladders in shot. The five-month edit makes me happy. All that work to make it look as if somebody happened to bring a camera to the office on a particularly bad day. The insults come out so easily that I forget how long somebody must have spent getting them right.
I wish the Americans felt as fully worked out. I know Karen Clark and Linton Barwick mostly by where they stand on the war, and I want a little more of their lives intruding on the job. The British have a furious constituent calling about a wall while they’re trying to do international diplomacy. I enjoy how little he cares about their busy day. Washington could use a few more interruptions like that.
Sukhdev Sandhu’s objection in the Telegraph was that the film enjoys this culture too much, that it’s a dirtier Yes, Minister flattering our cynicism. I understand the complaint, but I don’t think enjoying Capaldi means I’ve missed what a shit Malcolm is. I laughed for most of two hours, and I’m still appalled at how easily these people agree to let a war happen. I don’t need Iannucci to stop and check that I’ve understood.