Last Party 2000

An unshaven, chubby American in casual clothing is trying to find out what's wrong with America, on screen. Ah, I must be talking about Bowling for Columbine? No, in fact this review is concerned with Last Party 2000, and the unshaven interviewer/narrator is Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor regularly cast as sidekick, and not Michael Moore, the comic voice of the American Left. First of all, let's look at the themes: Last Party 2000 deals with the political disillusion of the population, by focusing on the 2000 elections. The events surrounding these elections are documented, supporters of both sides are interviewed, a sense of bewilderment seeps through the entire documentary; in short, all elements for a great and inspiring documentary appear to be there. All elements apart from entertainment and professionalism, sadly. In the end, this has to be a comparative review. This is unfair - Last Party 2000 was filmed and released years before Michael Moore's masterwork about the reasons behind America's problem with (gun-related) violence. But the visual similarities, the similar aims, the similar cast of strange Americans (including appearances by Michael Moore and Charlton Heston), ... practically force a 2003 viewer to feel a deja vu. A deja vu which painfully highlights the shortcomings. The first flaw is simply that Last Party tries to present itself as an objective documentary, the removed outsider holding up a mirror. A noble cause this may be, but there is little fun to be had that way. Worse, the objectivity is cast into doubt and eventually discarded, in favour of a decidedly partial view of the election. The hero is neither democrat nor republican, it is Ralph Nader of green fame. So while we get to see snippets of televised discussions between Gore and Bush that show the similarities between them, only Nader gets the chance to stand out in a favourable way.

One serious problem caused by the pretence impartiality is that both sides get to talk too much. Michael Moore carefully picked his subjects, filling his documentary with fanatical idiots on the one hand and carefully spoken people on the other. He never interviewed any sane person opposing his views, or any nutjob supporting them. He edited the interviews to provide the maximum scare factor and humour, or maximum content, depending on the views of the interviewee. Being openly biased helped Bowling for Columbine by allowing the film to be frightening and partially funny, convincing and fast-paced. Last Party, on the other hand, is poorly edited. Where Columbine shows Charlton Heston holding up a rifle, growling menacingly "from my cold dead hands", Last Party also shows the preceding "And to you, Gore...". No pace, little humour, and nothing to sustain interest. These flaws are most visible in two very poorly produced sequences.. First of all, there's the coverage of the two party conventions, and then there's Jesse Jackson. Republicans and Democrats held gigantic conventions preceding the elections. Both were surrounded by semi-violent protests, and both featured people making surprisingly identical statements about why they support their particular side. In the documentary, these conventions are shown in sequence, and not edited in parallel. This drags down the pace, requires the viewer to recall statements from ten minutes before and is simply not as effective as it could be. The second point, Jesse Jackson's interview, highlights another flaw rather painfully. We see the interviewers before and after the interview, sweating and remarking how nervous they are about seeing such a famous person. An interview where the interviewers are in awe of their subject? How professional is that? It highlights another problem: We get to see far too much of the documentary makers, with little justification. Bowling for Columbine may have been a one-man-show for Moore, but at least he was funny. Last Party 2000 features a group of surprisingly boring filmmakers, putting themselves into the centre far too often.

So we have a slow-paced, poorly edited, rather tedious, pretense impartial but actually biased vanity project of a documentary. Fine. I could live with that. Except, they then proceed to show the election aftermath, in the final minutes of the film. How can they justify dragging out the pre-election circus for hours if they then cut the post-election scandals into a five-minute sequence? Wouldn't that have been interesting enough to warrant a documentary all of its own? The final verdict is simple: They needed a better editor, and much more courage in presenting their views. The pre-election circus could have been cut down to a healthy 45 minutes, with another 45 minutes left for the post-election chaos. As it is, this documentary is not worth watching.

The Party's Over is a carefully constructed and thought-provoking look at both the democratic and republican parties, centering around each of their conventions before the 2000 election. The film makers got access to both conventions and do a wonderful job of showing the amazing hypocrisy of the US democratic process.

The film makers are clearly and unapologetically left-leaning, but that doesn't translate to sparing anyone. Only the greens come out well, but even that is undermined by the outcome of the 2000 election, which is the film's enervating denouement.

Mr. Hoffman does a great job with the interviews, becoming more confident as he moves along, and there's a charming exchange between him and Michael Moore, to whom he bears physical similarity.

Straight away, I'll disclose that I'm fascinated by politics and my views are probably to the left of most Nader voters, yet I've given over 5% of my income to the Democratic Party, Democratic candidates and pressure groups traditionally allied with the Democratic Party in recent years.

This documentary takes the same cynical view of American politics most people use as an excuse to not involve themselves in the democratic process: Republicans and Democrats are the same. I think that this has been refuted by past five years--and it was simplistic and naive, at best, to think so before then. We get side-tracked by tactics of the LA and Philadelphia police departments, which would be good grounds for a POV documentary on PBS, and a number of other dead-end subtopics. Then, we get to see a few things C-SPAN and the networks failed to show, like the shadow convention--one of the reasons I give this a low average rating, rather than a poor rating.

What this documentary and so many others fail to disclose is that we do live in a multi-party democracy within a two party system. The different factions within the Democratic and Republican Parties essentially give us the same choices one sees in the advanced multi-party democracies of Europe and elsewhere. We get to vote in primaries, they don't. Very briefly, Hoffman allows Barney Frank (always wise, witty and worthy of one's attention) to tell it like it is: Those on the left have abandoned the Democratic Party, if not the democratic process entirely, allowing it all to drift to the right. Simply put, most of those on the far right vote Republican. Most of those on the left don't vote, or waste their votes on people like Nader. Hence, Republicans win, Democrats lose. Unfortunately, Congressman Frank's wisdom (two minutes?) is almost wasted among the garbage here. I don't mean to split hairs here, but Rep. Frank was incorrectly identified with (R-MA) rather than (D-MA). Evidence of careless fact-checking? A thoughtful discussion with William Baldwin was the only other redeeming factor here. Unfortunately it was edited out, presumably because his was a progressive voice somewhat favoring the Democratic Party. It's among the extras on the DVD. Interestingly, among the predictions asserted by those being interviewed in this film, his are most eerily true.

All in all, I would praise this if it were an effort by high school students. However this was done by people who should know better. Hopefully now they do.

I am a liberal. The first viewing of this film presents some serious filmmaking problems. I had no problem with the sequential editing, but the editing in general was a problem. This is MTV style editing. Lots of fast cuts, unstable shots, and so forth. I got used to it, but it still makes it look as low-budget as it is. There is a heavy use of music. I understand that music is an important part of any movie, but this seems almost like there is too much of an emphasis on it. I watched this for a second time, and the movie worked a whole lot better, although the editing/camerawork bothered me again. I hardly view the end as being partisan. Equal amounts of gore/bush protesters are out. The only thing I see is that the Gore protesters are concerned about their votes not counting, and the Bush protesters seem to focus on the idea of Gore being a sore loser. If you view that in a partisan way, it'll be partisan. To me, it isn't.

The film is about the fact that the government does not represent everyone. I will concede that this film makes Nader out to be a hero. I found that I liked his ideas, although I would attribute some of that to his glorification in this film. The only thing that Hoffman outwardly seems to reject is the idea that all good will comes from religion. Otherwise, he really gives both sides an even view, and seems bored with the lack of content in either party.

Political neophyte and open-eyed observer Hoffman leads us on a trail through the Presidential campaign and election of 2000. The film is a depressing illumination of the selfishness pervasive in America (as a synonym for Libertarianism in the Conservative movement), of the events leading up to the election of George W. Bush, and the stifling of public debate and protest along the way, and of the crookedness of the election results, which put into power the most self-interested administration and one less committed to genuine altruistic compassion than any other, elected by deceit and money, and the impotence of a voting public, that in large measure sees itself disenfranchised by corporate and party domination.