Fridae

Barack Hussein Obama may be the president of the United States and the occupation of Iraq may have officially ended in October 2010 but the effects of the invasion of Iraq still linger on for many, such as Valerie Plame, who was outed as a CIA operative as payback because her husband, Joseph Wilson, had the temerity to write a New York Times article which debunked the Bush II administration’s claims that Saddam was in danger of developing nuclear weapons.

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.