Published Aug 17, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 17, 2026 | 7:00 AM
Of all the films in the list, Being There offers the greatest insights.
Synopsis: Part 1 of this series dealt with films which appear political but may not be. This Part focuses on films that often do not directly deal with the subject but have subtler and ultimately powerful political undertones and overtones. The following works, presented broadly in alphabetical order, deal in the complexities of private and public politics.
Hal Ashby’s 1979 Being There, based on Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, follows Chance (played superbly by Peter Sellers), an intellectually disabled man who has lived his entire life inside the property of a rich recluse.
He seems to work as a gardener and lives by a strict routine, which ends when his patron dies. Through a series of barely credible coincidences (this is the movies after all), he ends up in the care of Benjamin Rand (Melvyn Douglas), a dying millionaire, and his wife Eve (Shirley MacLaine). The Rands, a mischievous play on words, find their guest a reassuring presence.
The thin plot progresses through a series of misunderstandings beginning with his name. His introduction as “Chance . . . the gardener” somehow becomes “Chauncey Gardener”. Chance’s responses to given cues and his knowledge of gardening quickly elevate his status.
Introduced by his new patron to the President (an admirable deadpan Jack Warden), he quickly becomes a trusted advisor, primarily because of his trite homilies. Asked about the economy, Chance tells the President: “Spring, summer, autumn, winter . . . then spring again.” This is taken as profound wisdom. He becomes a television star and is considered for the Presidency.
Being There provides a penetrating commentary on the political process. Using phrases that he does not actually understand, Chance’s pronouncements are perfect media sound-bites. It anticipates the meaningless formulations that are the routine staple of politicians.
Inadvertently, Chance’s condition allows him to exploit the public’s short attention span and the need for short generic statements that avoid any specificity while maintaining deniability and flexibility. His neat and seemingly educated demeanour marks him out as a person of substance. His directness is taken for honesty. Chance’s reception is revealing of the innate superficiality of the voting public and how appearance, platitudes and connections are the basis of success in modern societies.
There are several revealing vignettes. Chance is addicted to TV: “I like to watch.” This leads to a humorous unconsummated sex scene with Eve, which she misinterprets as broadening her sexuality. When confronted by muggers, Chance points a remote at them and clicks but is surprised when they do not disappear. In the much-discussed final sequence of Being There, Chance casually walks onto the surface of a lake, a suitable metaphor for his unlikely ascent.
Bulworth features Warren Beatty seemingly playing himself, a one-time liberal who now finds it impossible to differentiate between the sides. He is accused by an opponent of being “old liberal wine trying to pour himself into a new conservative bottle.”
The incumbent senator is plagued by “a sea of troubles”, including millions in financial losses from dodgy investments. Most of all Bulworth hates himself and politics. He takes the unusual step of seeking to solve his problems by taking out a contract on himself for the insurance payout, which is the device which underpins the narrative.
The fact that he has only a few days left gives Bulworth freedom to behave and speak freely to the despair of his chief of staff (Oliver Platt). In a black church, he states: “We all come down here, get our pictures taken–forget about it.” He tells African-Americans to buy influence just like the white population.
In Beverly Hills, Bulworth insults Jewish movie magnates: “How much money do you guys really need?” He tells them that they produce “mostly crap.” He begins to frequent hip-hop clubs, take drugs, and consort with several young black women, including Nina (Halle Berry). Taken to the black neighbourhood she is from, Bulworth sees first-hand children selling crack and meets families where one or more members have died in gun violence.
The whimsical plotting is slight and risky, but the film, released in 1998, bristles with a visceral anger and discontent that mines the same seams as Network and The China Syndrome.
The Conformist: Bertolucci’s most daring film
The Conformist, which appeared in 1970, is set in 1930s Europe. It follows Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) sent to assassinate his one-time exiled teacher–the anti-Fascist professor Quadri. To ingratiate himself with Italy’s Blackshirts, Clerici uses the excuse of his honeymoon in Paris to attempt the assassination.
Adapted from Alberto Moravia’s 1951 novel, it is a clinical study of the pitiful weakness of ideals and how individuals succumb to external pressures.
Sexual and political tension intermingle. There is Clerici’s flaccid attempt to rekindle a hinted-at past relationship with the professor’s wife, Anna (played by the striking Dominique Sanda, who in the 1970s was in almost every arthouse film of consequence). There is his young, politically naïve wife Giulia (beautifully underplayed by Stefania Sandrelli), whom Anna seduces. Their sensual dance during a night out in Paris is memorable.
The otherwise standard plot of The Conformist is cleverly enhanced by stylistic sophistication with frequent cross-cutting, temporal shifts, and unexpected details.
Created by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, the film’s look is exquisite. Glorious colours (yellows, reds, oranges and blues), dappled light and shadows play across beautifully created settings and costumes.
The film’s extraordinary assassination scene takes place in the snow-covered landscape where Mussolini’s thugs trap Quadri and Anna’s car. The largely silent (only the wind is audible) finale is eerie as Anna is forced to watch her husband being stabbed to death by faceless men. Running towards the car where Clerici sits, Anna pleads wordlessly for her life before being killed.
Jean-Louis Trintignant’s assassin is a study in cowardice, climaxing in Clerici’s inaction in the killing or helping Quadri and Anna. He is shown sitting in the car, his impotence obvious.
Director Bernardo Bertolucci would go on to make many films, including the controversial Last Tango in Paris. But he would never again attempt something as daring as The Conformist.
Known for his aesthetics, particularly meticulous images, sets, lighting, camera angles, and precise framing, rather than content, Stanley Kubrick surprisingly made two politically charged films: Dr Strangelove (1964) and A Clockwork Orange (1971).
Dr Strangelove mines the dramatic possibilities of the Cold War, playing on fears of errors or loss of command structures triggering a nuclear catastrophe.
Air Force Brigadier General Jack D Ripper orders a fleet of B-52s carrying hydrogen bombs to strike Russian targets based on his belief that communists are plotting to pollute “our precious bodily fluids”, a theory frighteningly close to QAnon and MAGA beliefs. The film focuses on the attempts by Ripper’s British executive officer Lionel Mandrake and American President Merkin Muffley to stop this rogue attack, which would trigger the Russian doomsday machine and bring life on the planet to an end.
Brilliantly scripted by Kubrick and Terry Southern, Dr Strangelove is full of brilliant performances. Sterling Hayden’s cigar-chomping Ripper is insane. George C Scott’s General Chucky Turgidson is all tics, grimaces, eyebrows, and gum-chewing bravado. Slim Pickens’ Texan Major TJ “King” Kong, as the captain of the last plane seeking to bomb “them Ruskies”, rides an airborne H-bomb like a bucking bronco in the penultimate scene.
Peter Sellers undertakes multiple roles, including Mandrake and Muffley. Much has been made of his performance as Dr Merkwürdigliebe (which translates in English to Dr Strangelove), a Kissinger-like advisor to the American President whose past keeps manifesting itself in awkward Sieg Heils and Nazi salutes. Overly mannered and self-indulgent, the performance compares poorly to the subtlety that Sellers brings to his other parts.
Shot in stark black-and-white, the film is set mainly in Ripper’s airbase office, the War Room, and the interior of a B-52 bomber, interspersed with gawky special effects of obviously model planes in the sky. The War Room is particularly noteworthy, consisting of a large back-lit map and a circular desk swallowed in a gloomy darkness. The limited sets allow the sharp dialogue to dominate.
There is Muffley’s call to the Russian premier: “Dimitri, we have a little problem”. This is followed by a preposterous exchange as to who is the sorriest. General Turgidson’s impassioned plea to prevent the Russian Ambassador from entering the War Room: “Sir, you can’t let him in here. He’ll see everything. He’ll see the big board!” President Muffley’s declaration: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” Russian Ambassador de Sadesky’s justification of the Doomsday machine as responding to the fear that the Americans were building one: “Our source was The New York Times.” Turgidson’s attempt to rationalise the failure of controls over nuclear weapons: “Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.” But the finest comic lines are Ripper’s explanation of the need to preserve the purity of his bodily fluids
Dr Strangelove’s satire is guided by a central principle of comedy: being absurdly serious is often funnier than trying to be funny. It remains a cautionary critique of the idiocy of mutually assured destruction, doomsday machines, and the impossibility of preventing the wrong person from having access to weapons of mass destruction.
The politics of A Clockwork Orange, arguably Kubrick’s best, is more complicated. Set in a dystopian future which now seems contemporary, it is a film about gangs of violent thugs – “droogs” – over-running Britain.
Betrayed by his associates, gang leader Alex (a superb Malcolm McDowell) is caught and convicted. He seeks to shorten his prison term by volunteering for a trial program involving aversion therapy or clinical remedial torture. He is forced to watch upsetting films to condition him against violence. The violence of the scene where his eyelids are clipped wide open and lubricated with an eyedropper counterpoints Alex’s violent rape and murder committed to the backdrop of “Singing in the Rain”. Ironically, the presence of Beethoven on the soundtrack causes Alex to hate not just violence but also the music that he loved and was perhaps his redeeming feature.
This reversal, where state-sponsored violence is used as punishment, is central to the film’s subversive politics. Is Alex’s violence a byproduct of societal failures? Can you justify an eye for an eye (or as Marco Rubio’s catechism states, “a head for an eye”)? Should the viewer feel sympathy for Alex or his victim?
This challenge to traditional liberal sensibilities is embodied in the character of Frank Alexander (Patrick Magee), a “writer of subversive literature”. Crippled by Alex in the home invasion where his wife is raped and murdered, Alexander wants to use the “cured” criminal as a political weapon. He uncovers his house guest’s identity by overhearing Alex’s rendition of “Singing in the Rain” in the bath.
Alexander tries to kill his assailant by drugging him, locking him in a bedroom, and playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony loudly. Alex, unable to bear the pain, attempts to kill himself by jumping from the window. Recovering in hospital from his injuries, Alex discovers he no longer has aversions to violence and sex. The film’s chilling end, anticipating future crimes, has Alex thinking: “I was cured, all right!”
Many critics railed against the film’s ultra-violence. But unlike many films which depict violent acts gratuitously, A Clockwork Orange uses it to explore societal acceptance of aggression. The world, at least as Kubrick paints it, is full of contradictions.
Istvan Szabo’s 1981 Mephisto reprises the personal politics that Bertolucci studied in The Conformist.
Based on Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel, it is a brilliant analysis of collaboration. Hendrik Hofgen (played with great skill by Klaus Maria Brandauer) is a mediocre actor who chooses to remain behind in Nazi Germany. He justifies his choice as being “German” and his fears of being stranded without his own language in exile in a foreign country. He sees himself as apolitical and not personally responsible for the rise of the Nazis. In fact, he cunningly sees opportunity with his more skilled rivals out of the way.
Known for his portrayal of Faust (an obvious metaphor), the film follows Hofgen’s rise. He uses his abundant charm and exploits people ruthlessly to further his ambition. One central tension is his relationship with the powerful Nazi general, who can make or break his career. In one scene, his patron wonders why the actor’s handshake is limp, in contrast to his powerful portrayal of Mephistopheles. He betrays multiple women, marrying one only because her father can improve his prospects. When his father-in-law loses power, he leaves his wife. He continues his affair with a black dancer (played by Karin Boyd) who speaks of his “cheating, lying eyes”.
Mephisto superbly creates Germany from the 1920s to the 1940s, with its Nazi pageantry and symbols. The narrative is subtly realised by a gradual change in tone throughout the film. Brandauer’s Hofgen seems initially to dominate the screen with his energetic presence but gradually fades as his professional success is counterbalanced by his moral decline. Szabo manipulates the audience with the play within the play – an actor playing an actor skilfully making people within and outside the film believe in whatever character he inhabits.
Mephisto’s ambiguity lies in Hofgen’s attempts to rationalise his actions in terms of realising his talent, faithfulness to art, and patriotism. Like The Conformist, it questions what anybody would do in the political circumstances that the actor finds himself in. The merciless story gains factual context from the controversial life of Leni Riefenstahl, who produced some of the most powerful propaganda of the Nazi era.
Szabo returned to this theme less successfully in two biographical dramas: Colonel Redl (1985) and Taking Sides (2001). The latter is based on the true story of conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who is pursued relentlessly by a US Army lawyer (played with malice by Harvey Keitel) desperate to nail the “bandleader” as a Nazi collaborator in ravaged post-war Germany. The ideas are similar but never quite as marvellously realised as in Mephisto.
Barry Levinson’s 1997 Wag the Dog is the most conventional of the films discussed. The clever script, by David Mamet and Hilary Henkin, revolves around efforts to hide the American President’s molestation of an underage “Firefly Girl” in the White House before a presidential election.
White House aide Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) and spin doctor Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) recruit producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to mastermind a distraction campaign based around a phoney international crisis with Albania. Motss’s media strategy is delectable shtick: terrorists skulking with “suitcase bombs”; logos for use on the news channels; a Willie Nelson song as the conflict’s “spontaneous” anthem; fake news including footage of a hapless Albanian girl (Kirsten Dunst) fleeing rapists with her kitten; and an unlikely martyr – a psychotic Sgt. William Schumann (Woody Harrelson). Hoffman’s Motss, whose insistence that ‘it’s his movie’ and demand for ‘credit’ ultimately prove his undoing, and De Niro’s poker-faced shadowy Brean are outstanding.
Wag the Dog’s power comes from plausibility – the confusion of fact and art. America’s history of diversionary wars is well documented. The Israeli Prime Minister’s putting his country in a state of constant warfare to stall prosecution for alleged corruption is known. What the film depressingly presents is that all politicians must be actors and politics is increasingly theatre rather than governing.
Costas-Gavras, more than most directors, has sought to make explicitly political films. The 1969 Z, meaning “he is alive still”, is based on the 1963 murder of Greek Deputy George Lambrakis.
The film’s first half revolves around the deputy (played by Yves Montand) while the latter parts focus on the magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant) investigating the suspected assassination, involving government thugs who characterise it as a traffic accident involving a drunk driver, already in their custody.
The second half of the film, in which the investigator stubbornly assembles evidence despite official pressure to desist, depicts a maze of facts, alibis, and state corruption. The magistrate uncovers the true cause of death and seeks to charge high-ranking military officers. The country’s attorney general attempts to halt the prosecution, arguing that it will harm the nation.
The film concludes with one of the deputy’s associates rushing to give his widow the surprising news of the officers’ indictments. An epilogue provides a synopsis of the subsequent events where the prosecutor is removed from the case, several key witnesses die under suspicious circumstances, the assassins receive relatively short sentences, the officers receive only administrative reprimands, the deputy’s close associates die or are deported, and the investigating journalist who gathered crucial evidence is sent to prison for disclosing official documents.
Z’s depiction of political corruption questions the meaning of justice where the state and certain members of society are above the law. The process where the guilty are rehabilitated, and those responsible for identifying the culprits are deemed as criminals remains depressingly the norm. Z’s rage and political cynicism remain potent.
All these films question our political structures. Being There offers the greatest insights. Peter Sellers thought himself ideally suited to the role of Chance because he had “absolutely no personality at all… I am a chameleon… When I am not playing a role, I am nobody.”
The similarity of many leaders to Chance is notable. Politicians are increasingly blank sheets, ever willing to tailor their views to the situation. Large parts of the electorate go along, embracing hollow slogans and empty policies. As the gardener, Sellers remains detached and secure. Proffering trite advice, he is unaware of his limitations and ignorance. But neither are the smarter people around him.
What great political films do is force you to confront the fact that through our individual and collective actions or inactions, we end up with the governments that we tolerate. That will continue as long as we do not directly confront our leaders or the system itself.
Also Read:
On Cinema: Political films from All The President’s Men to The Manchurian Candidate
Trump-ite world or not, there was never any West—only arguments about it
(Satyajit Das, a former banker and author of numerous technical works on derivatives and several general titles: Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006 and 2010), Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011) and A Banquet of Consequence – Reloaded (2016 and 2021). His latest book, The Everything Bubble: A Guide to the New Age of Financial Speculation and Phantom Wealth, will be released in 2027. He has also written on ecotourism – In Search of the Pangolin (2006) (with Jade Novakovic) and Wild Quests: Journeys into Ecotourism and the Future for Animals (2024). This is being co-published with nakedcapitalism.com.)
(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
