Lynne manages to get her indolent boyfriend Dick into college, who rather than study ends up getting expelled because of alcohol. He starts working as a laborer but will be arrested for fighting and drunk driving.

Lynne, who projects onto him the talent that she, as a woman, cannot exercise, gives him an ultimatum, to become a man of power. There is no alternative and he cannot give up.

The ascent from blue-collar worker to de facto president of the United States will begin with the thunderous laughter of the swaggering and cynical mentor Donald Rumsfeld in the face of Dick's naive question, " We, what do we believe in?"

An incipit that unequivocally points to the purpose of power, justifying any means to achieve and maintain it.

The figure of Lynne Vincent, with her unscrupulous ambition, will determine Dick's rise to power even in the face of his daughter's coming out.

It is a hard blow for an ultraconservative Republican family to find itself with a lesbian daughter to deal with in respect to the blackmail of politics and the press.

But a family so devoted to power will not hesitate to get around the obstacle even when their other daughter Liz runs for Wyoming. Accused of not being conservative enough she will speak out against gay marriage.

A tale that masterfully manages to traverse one man's public and private experience while continually touching universal thematic chords.

The director of The Big Bet again succeeds in telling a very complicated story in a sarcastic at times surreal way, injecting humor through serious topics, allowing for the elaboration of complicated issues and facilitating a usable understanding for all.

The figure of George Bush needing the puppet master Cheney is a real cinematic finesse, especially where even Colin Powell did not agree with the policy in Iraq and yet did not hesitate to appear before the U.S. Security Council to present evidence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, just to justify the attack. The film's careful script emphasizes that power does not hesitate to resort to the even more subtle form of surveillance that is the control of thought, of ideas: the study of think tanks, the survey of public opinion to find out that people do not know what Al Qaeda is so it is necessary to offer them a place to attack.

Even more interesting is the focus on how the control of the ideas of all those who are subordinate to power takes place and thus how demagogic applause is determined: spying on the citizen and knowing what he thinks means giving him what he wants, therefore granting him the illusion that power is doing just what is wanted and desired. Consensus-building and the grotesque menu of the day presented at a dinner among the powerful by an expert waiter characterize McKay's true cinematic feat.

Therefore, Dick's naive initial question becomes the symbolic mantra of the film, "what do we believe in?"

The interplay of the attunement of a family where "values" seem to converge perfectly collides with the duality of love on the one hand and ambition on the other.

A labyrinthine, challenging, tragically realistic and surprisingly disturbing film.

An excellent work of entertainment structured to elicit question marks, food for thought of absolute intensity.

Although it may seem obvious that telling Dick Cheney's story focuses attention on the concept of power, here, however, the focus is not power but ethics.

The very question that elicits Ramsfeld's sarcastic laughter actually encapsulates the sense of an underlying choice that echoes throughout the film: on the basis of what underlying choice do we act?

UBI MAIOR MINOR CESSAT: If in the face of what is deemed greater the lesser decays, here power trumps the ethics that should embody ubi maior.

Then again, in a radically capitalist reality, power for its own sake cannot but win over any ethics of responsibility and any respect for Res Pubblica.

An unmissable film on the ethics of power: if responsibility is entrusted to the technical "response," where the imperative that one "must" do all that one "can" do is implied..

20-Aug-2023 by Beatrice