Word: warrens
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...Carville, Clinton's manic political operative, dreamed up the idea of making this picture and is credited as one of its executive producers. But the movie, All the King's Men, is not a cheesy, made-for-TV biopic. It is, in fact, a conscientious adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's 1946 Pulitzer prizewinning novel, which was also the basis of a much more rambunctious movie by Robert Rossen, which won the 1949 Best Picture Oscar...
...film, Steven Zaillian, says he has never seen Rossen's very good film, and that probably makes sense. Zaillian's movie is much more a reimagining than a remake, and it's much more faithful to the tone of the novel, which is by no means easy to duplicate. Warren was a prolix and poetic writer, and a man torn between conflicting loyalties. He began his career as a Southern conservative, celebrating the agrarian traditions of the region, but found himself fascinated by the vulgar, driving (and possibly transformative) energy of Huey Long, Louisiana's legendary Governor--Senator-- presidential candidate...
...film, as in Warren's novel, Burden is Stark's equal, and the restoration of that balance is important to the movie's success. Commentators on Warren's work often say that it's a study in how power corrupts, and that Willie is essentially a good man ruined by dictatorial depravity. Sean Penn strikes that note, playing him with a kind of bantam-rooster energy--and good-ole-boy charm. But something else is present, thanks in part to Zaillian's alertness to Warren's nuances. Willie has what Huey Long surely did not: a primitive sense of original...
...Warren, despite his penchant for overripe prose, created an indelible portrait of the American demagogue. And, yes, we acknowledge there is a touch of Willie Stark in every politician who catches the national eye. The line between idealism and opportunism is ever thin as paper. But in Willie's relentless, utterly insatiable appetites there is something beyond the powers of political commentary or literary criticism to convey. It is much more than a conventional ambition, a presidential dream. Lots of men entertain that fantasy. What drives him is an unacknowledged anarchy of the soul. There is no reason why Willie...
Ultimately, of course, Anne is Willie's undoing. But it is important to Warren, and to Zaillian, who has the courage to let his very handsome movie unfold at a stately but not self-important pace, that its tragedy is located not in the semicomic hurly-burly of politics but in the dankness of the heart. What's being said here is that politics is always, at least temporarily, reformable--Willie Stark, for a moment, had that power--but that irrational need is beyond governance...