‘Truth’ review: Cate Blanchett is the victim of her own mistakes

[yasr_overall_rating]

Truth is a gutsy movie and not in a good way. Writer/director James Vanderbilt amazingly asks us to sympathize with people who created their own downfalls, with his source material being the book by one of those people. It’s about one of the biggest blunders in journalism history and attempts to make 60 Minutes II producer Mary Mapes and Dan Rather victims of a system.

Shortly after Mapes (Cate Blanchett) suddenly made a name for herself with the Abu Ghraib story, she decides to turn her attention to another idea: President George W. Bush’s record with the National Guard during the Vietnam War. Her new 60 Minutes II producers give her the greenlight and she gets Rather (Robert Redford) on the story. She assembles a crack team to work with her, including Mike Smith (Topher Grace), Lucy Scott (Elisabeth Moss) and Col. Roger Charles (Dennis Quaid). Mapes and her team continue to investigate, even though their smoking gun - the documents that might prove that Bush went AWOL during Vietnam - raises several red flags.

After the story is rushed through production and airs, it quickly falls apart as the documents’ authenticity is called into question. Therefore, the second half of the film deals with the emotional roller coaster Mapes is put through and her attempts to save the story. Everything around her begins to fall apart and she fears that she might have taken down Rather, too. (She did, of course.)

The film is told entirely through Mapes’ perspective, which makes sense since it is based on her book, Truth and Duty. Vanderbilt, who wrote one of the best crime dramas of the last decade with Zodiac, relies so much on that perspective that he winds up turning Mapes into a tragic figure. But she is only a tragic figure made of her own fault. She was careless at every turn, but it’s OK because once her mistakes are found, she can fight the system. She can prove that CBS’ obsession with making money gets in the way of reporting. Smith can prove that the White House is in Viacom’s pocket. All of this is great, but the fact remains that mistakes were made by Mapes and her team.

One thing that saves Truth from being just a good TV movie is Cate Blanchett, who can pretty much make a movie about paper bags exciting. Her performance as Mapes is touching and often funny. There’s moments where she just wears the anguish on her face. No one in the industry today can break down like Blanchett and command the screen while doing it. It is impossible to look away each time she is on the screen.

Other actors feel underused. Robert Redford glides through the movie as more of an icon than an actual character. And the other members of the team barely get attention. (How long is Elisabeth Moss in this movie and why did she take such a small part? I hope she was well paid.) Bruce Greenwood gets to be his usual stern self as then-CBS News President Andrew Heyward and John Benjamin Hickey plays his usual loving dad/husband as Mapes’ husband. Stacy Keach also appears as Bill Burkett, the source of the documents.

Vanderbilt also isn’t as good a director as he is a writer. The film has a very boring look and his choice of music clearly attempts to give this some operatic feel. There’s choral music playing as horrible mistakes are being made. It’s jarring, frustrating and pulls Truth away from being a serious thriller.

Truth isn’t a complete waste of time if you enjoy watching Blanchett chew scenery, but the film is too open to turning the scandal into a Shakespearean tragedy. Mapes’ inability to get to the truth isn’t something to be celebrated because she really did set back CBS News for years and contributed to the downfall of Rather, a journalist whose entire career is now questioned. The one thing Truth proves is that the journalist can’t just pick an angle and stick with it. You have to go where the evidence takes you, not where you want the evidence to take you.

Truth is now in theaters and was reviewed at the Savannah Film Festival, presented by the Savannah College of Art and Design.