Fair Game, named after Valerie Plame’s memoirs, covers the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Joseph Wilson’s investigations into the Niger yellowcake incident, Plame’s outing, and the aftermath.
Given the real life material this film is based on, you can be assured that Fair Game will be a shoo-in for some Oscar nominations since the Academy is a liberal institution. That said, the creators of the film do work hard for the prize. This film is no shrill polemic, no politicised diatribe, and contains no angry denunciations of anyone in the Bush II administration. At no point is anyone called power-hungry, duplicitous, or even murderous. At no point is the raison d’etre for the invasion of Iraq even called fraudulent.
Instead, the film is measured, dignified, and intensely personal, focusing on the breakdown of Valerie Plame’s marriage to Joseph Wilson. It is a character study pitting Sean Penn’s man of action and vocal anti-war activist against Naomi Watts’s apparatchik whose loyalty to her organisation necessitates a path of inaction, and throws them into a crucible that is the Bush administration’s media campaign to destroy both their careers and reputations. This is not the story that we expect but it’s still a story well told.
Perhaps one day, Oliver Stone or Aaron Sorkin could recount Plamegate in its historical and political context. There is a story about how an administration nurtured a cosy relationship with Beltway pundits and political journalists who then served as its willing attack dogs, propagandists, and knowing purveyors of untruths and outright lies. That story, which plays such a critical role in Plamegate, was not told here and it needs to be told eventually.