Wein­er

Does involve­ment in sleazy extra­mar­i­tal shenani­gans mean that a politi­cian is inher­ent­ly unsuit­ed to a role in pub­lic office? Or is he dis­qual­i­fied by the mob-ruled fren­zy of con­dem­na­tion that fol­lows pub­lic expo­sure? The mat­ter of how we judge those who seek to rep­re­sent us, and what hap­pens when repul­sion takes over from inves­ti­ga­tion, is one of the many insights pre­sent­ed by a doc­u­men­tary that bears wit­ness to the fall and rise and hard­er fall of a dou­bly-dis­graced Amer­i­can politi­cian named Antho­ny Weiner.

The sheer unlike­li­ness of a politi­cian shar­ing a name with a slang term for the organ of his undo­ing reflects the sheer unlike­li­ness of almost every twist and turn in this fly-on-the-wall thrill ride. This is doc­u­men­tary as priv­i­leged access to an extra­or­di­nary time. When film­mak­ers Elyse Stein­berg and Josh Krieg­man (Weiner’s for­mer con­gres­sion­al chief-of-staff) began film­ing Wein­er in 2013, it was to doc­u­ment his come­back bid to become may­or of New York.

What was he com­ing back from? Well, some­thing of a rook­ie error. In 2011, Wein­er resigned from his role as Con­gress­man after acci­den­tal­ly tweet­ing a pho­to of his erect penis clad in grey pants. The image was meant to reach a 21-year-old female col­lege stu­dent, and it emerged that this was not a first-time offence: Wein­er was a prof­li­gate sex­ter. Off he went to work things out with his wife, who hap­pened and still hap­pens to be Huma Abe­din, a long-time high-rank­ing mem­ber of Hilary Clinton’s staff.

What is reveal­ing about the film is that, although a light­ning round-up of the scan­dal hap­pens with­in the first five min­utes, it is not the narrative’s starter pis­tol. First, we are shown a pre-dis­grace Wein­er in action in Con­gress. He is a fierce advo­cate for lib­er­al val­ues and has a nat­ur­al flair for invig­o­rat­ing the stale dis­course of con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tick­ing. From here-on, we have a point-of-ref­er­ence for his char­ac­ter that is far removed from the dick pic lit­er­al­ly syn­ony­mous with his name.

The film shows his polit­i­cal cam­paign as a bat­tle to reclaim his nar­ra­tive and ide­o­log­i­cal terms. For a stretch he makes good ground, and events pos­sess­es the mount­ing eupho­ria of a David ver­sus Goliath vic­to­ry. Wein­er leads the polls and it’s clear to see why – he owns his scan­dal, refus­ing to be cowed by rival can­di­dates who try to shame him. He hits the New York trail with ener­gy, charis­ma and – cru­cial­ly – an aura of being a people’s politi­cian. Huma, a dig­ni­fied, ele­gant and well-con­nect­ed woman, lends him her pub­lic sup­port and pri­vate allies.

And then, boom. New sexts emerge. To add insult to injury, Wein­er sent these under the pseu­do­nym, ​‘Car­los Dan­ger’. Every­thing falls apart for the cam­paign and every­thing blows up for the doc­u­men­tary. What starts off as a char­ac­ter study set against a polit­i­cal back­drop becomes a front-row seat at a blood­bath. Wein­er, although clear­ly very flawed, is sub­ject to such intense and repet­i­tive­ly angled media aggres­sion, that it makes you won­der what kind of a hell­beast we have created.

The ques­tion of the women involved, how they have been affect­ed, and whether the sexts were solicit­ed or unso­licit­ed, is not cov­ered (pre­sum­ably to pro­tect iden­ti­ties). There is one excep­tion in Syd­ney Leathers, who rel­ish­es the prospect of vengeance, appear­ing on TV broad­casts and stak­ing out the Wein­er cam­paign HQ. She smiles and almost purrs, faux inno­cent­ly won­der­ing why a man who once showed her his most inti­mate parts, is now try­ing to avoid a run in.

It’s a tes­ta­ment to edi­tor, Eli B Depres, that so many ten­drils of the sto­ry are cap­tured and put togeth­er with such pace and flu­id­i­ty that it makes your heart pound. The por­tray­al of Wein­er is bal­anced, but even the worst of him is eclipsed by the relent­less and disin­gen­u­ous pitch of the out­rage around him. A head­line eats itself ad nau­se­am. A punch­line turns into a bat­ter­ing ram. All the while the cam­eras run, cap­tur­ing not just the rab­bit in the head­lights but the machine pow­er­ing these beams.

All this leaves you won­der­ing what places remain on the world stage for calm, ratio­nal, truth­ful voic­es. As a British writer, I can’t help but think of the chill­ing idea expressed post-Brex­it by a Finan­cial Times com­menter that we live in a ​‘post-fac­tu­al’ soci­ety. Didac­tic voic­es can win over the mass­es by being loud and bold and deaf to nuance. Where has this one-note hys­te­ria come from? Is it a fear of hav­ing noth­ing to say for a few moments in the end­less news cycle? Why do we, the pub­lic, enter­tain it? How do we escape and climb to high­er ground? The answer – if only for 96 min­utes – is by watch­ing Weiner.