I saw Recount this week and it was pretty much exactly what I’d been led to expect it would be–a series of scenes alternating between Democrats heroically striving to sustain democratic institutions and James Baker craftily working to subvert them. According to an Entertainment Weekly chat with Laura Dern, a self-described “like, out of the womb” Democrat (Congratulations on making it, sister!), this set-up is the definition of politically unbiased artistic interpretation. Dern herself “had a job” to achieve a non-partisan understanding of the “perspective” of her character Katherine Harris–the understood perspective being, of course, she was a make-up encased, Bible-thumping half-wit easily manipulated by the forces of evil.
Neverthless, when asked to defend the film’s portrayal of Warren Christopher, which some former Gore campaign officials have complained is too “wuss”-like, Dern gets right to the point: “I never thought he was a wuss. What I got from the script was, he’s from another time–when nobility meant something. But that doesn’t fly with this administration. That’s the tragedy.”
Well, she got one thing right. That definitely is what you get from the script.
