The Ides of March

Mike Morris, the governor of Pennsylvania in “The Ides of March,” is an image of the liberal heart’s desire, and not only because he is played by George Clooney. Morris, who keeps his cool while inflaming the passions of Democratic primary voters, is a committed environmentalist and a forthright secularist who sidesteps questions about his faith by professing that his religion is the United States Constitution. He is against war and in favor of jobs, though the economy figures much less in his fictitious campaign than it will in the real one just around the corner.

In spite of Morris’s party affiliation and expressed positions — which are tailored to sound both vague and provocative — “The Ides of March” is not an ideological fairy tale. It is easy enough, while watching Morris in action, to substitute a different set of talking points and imagine the governor as a Republican dream candidate, smoothly defending low taxes and traditional values in the same seductive whisper. (Who is the right-wing George Clooney? Is Tom Selleck still available?)

But it is difficult, really, to connect this fable to the world it pretends to represent. Whatever happens in 2012, within either party or in the contest between them, it seems fair to say that quite a lot will be at stake. That is not the case in “The Ides of March,” which is less an allegory of the American political process than a busy, foggy, mildly entertaining antidote to it.

Morris, locked in a battle for the nomination with a colorless (and barely seen) Senator Pullman (Michael Mantell), is a bit of a cipher, or perhaps a symbol. He stands for an ideal of political charisma that the film, directed by Mr. Clooney and based on the play “Farragut North” by Beau Willimon, sets out to tarnish. And yet it seems doubtful, after more than a decade of scandal, acrimony and bare-knuckled media brawling, that this noble fantasy exists anywhere but in the minds of writers and actors who look back fondly on the glorious make-believe administrations of Henry Fonda and Martin Sheen.

“You stay in this business long enough, you get jaded and cynical,” one campaign staffer says to another. “The Ides of March” sets out first to rebut this bit of conventional wisdom, then to reaffirm it. It is in large part the tale of a professional politico’s loss of innocence. Not Morris’s, but that of Stephen Meyers, a young hotshot on the governor’s campaign staff who is played, with sad-eyed intensity, by Ryan Gosling. His prodigious talents are mentioned rather than shown, but we can accept that he is both a dazzling tactical brain and, what’s more, a true believer, working for Morris because he thinks Morris is the last, best hope for America.

Stephen’s boss is Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose counterpart in the Pullman campaign is Tom Duffy, played by Paul Giamatti. “The Ides of March” feels most alive and truest to its ostensible subject when these two soft-bellied, sharp-tongued schlubs do battle, with the angelic Stephen in the middle. Hovering around him like a crow circling carrion is Marisa Tomei as Ida Horowicz, a New York Times reporter who might be the only journalist covering the campaign or at least the only one with a speaking part in the movie. (Go team!)

But what political drama there is in this film — will Morris win the Ohio primary? Will his staff cut a deal with a vain and imperious North Carolina senator (Jeffrey Wright)? — is scaffolding rather than substance. As the Shakespearean title suggests, “The Ides of March” has loftier, less time-bound matters on its mind: the nature of honor, the price of loyalty, the ways that a man’s actions are a measure of his character.

These themes, swathed in Alexandre Desplat’s dark-hued score and Phedon Papamichael’s chocolate-and-burgundy cinematography, come into relief as Stephen encounters turbulence in his career and his personal life. He stumbles into a professional flirtation with Duffy, and almost simultaneously into some hot campaign sex with Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood), a young woman who is — no points for guessing right — an intern. She also has a powerful daddy and a secret in her past that has the potential to send Stephen’s career and the Morris campaign into a tailspin.

Mr. Clooney handles the plot complications with elegant dexterity. As an actor, he works best in long, understated scenes that allow him to play with nuances of charm and menace, so it is not surprising that, as a director, he gives the rest of the cast room to work. But the parts of “The Ides of March” — quiet scenes between Mr. Gosling and Ms. Wood; swirling, Sorkinesque exchanges of banter; any time Ms. Tomei or Max Minghella (as a campaign worker grooming himself to be the next Stephen Meyers) are in the room — are greater than the whole.

Somehow, the film is missing both adrenaline and gravity, notwithstanding some frantic early moments and a late swerve toward tragedy. It makes its points carefully and unimpeachably but does not bring much in the way of insight or risk. Powerful men often treat women as sexual playthings. Reporters do not always get things right. Politicians sometimes lie. If any of that sounds like news to you, then you may well find “The Ides of March” downright electrifying.