The New Yorker – May 13, 2019

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boys. How else can you be sure to trounce them? Hence her dirty cackle, and hence the scene in which the Secretary of State gets totally zonked at a club, only to be pulled outside and forced to cope with a diplomatic emergency. Behold her, flopped against a wall, murmuring on the hotline to a hostile head of state, with glittering confetti in her hair. What this movie reveals about geo- politics, or gender politics, need not de- tain us long. Despite a few palpable hits, as when Charlotte remarks that a woman of power can never raise her voice, lest she be accused of hysteria, the needle of dramatic interest tends to swing toward the Freddish point of view. He has his pal Lance to banter with; Charlotte is mainly alone, bereft of repartee, until the arrival of Fred. Elsewhere, we get Char- lotte enduring a cozy, cooked-up dinner with the Canadian Prime Minister (Al- exander Skarsgård), an oyster-slurping creep, while paparazzi swarm outside, and one fine sequence (why only one?) with Lisa Kudrow as a political P.R. con- sultant, who dryly admits that, in her trade, “we don’t drill down into specific policies, because people don’t seem to care.” Weirdest of all is a sudden lunge toward the lost values of bipartisan bal- ance, as a friend of Fred’s confesses to being—whisper it softly—a Republican and a Christian. Regardless, they agree to stay friends. Aah. Be warned: “Long Shot” is an R-rated flick. Do not be misled, however, into thinking that it’s suitable for grownups. Rather, given its blizzard of sniggering gags about boners and butt slaps, it is aimed at adolescents of all ages. The word “fuck” is tacked to every other line of dialogue, whether it belongs there or

not, and the set-piece gross-out is fo- cussed, tellingly, on the onanistic male; here, in short, is a degraded “Beauty and the Beast,” with jerk-off jokes instead of a singing teapot. As for the ending, it’s no surprise that the plot, like that of “Pretty Woman” (1990) or “Notting Hill” (1999), turns out to be soluble by fan- tasy alone. You could argue that such silly satisfaction comes with the terri- tory, but although I enjoyed the snap of “Long Shot,” I couldn’t help remember- ing how “Roman Holiday” (1953)—an- other film about a lowly journalist who falls for a higher being—draws to its wrenching close. Audrey Hepburn, as the princess, and Gregory Peck, as the reporter, exchange a handshake and a look, wild with all regret, then return to their separate lives. Love keeps company with reason. Where should we go, these days, for entertainment as adult as that?

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or real romance, more unabashed than anything in “Long Shot,” try the latest Werner Herzog documentary. In particular, try the scene in which Herzog, casting aside all inhibition, ex- claims, in his matchless tones, “We luff you. I luff you.” Whom is he address- ing? Not Charlize Theron, or the ghost of Marlene Dietrich, but a paunchy Rus- sian widower of eighty-seven, with a birthmark on his scalp. The movie is called “Meeting Gorba- chev,” and, though studded with archi- val clips, it is largely based upon three interviews that Herzog, who once ate his own shoe on camera, conducts with the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. The two men get on famously, and Gor- bachev doesn’t even mind when a gift

of chocolates, bearing his name, comes with the “G” broken off. (Imagine pre- senting Stalin with a chocolate “talin.” You’d be in the cellars of the Lubyanka by sundown.) In some ways, it’s a sad spectacle: Gorbachev is more heavyset than hitherto, and slower in his speech, showing little of the agility that caused such astonishment when, unlike his waxen predecessors, he ventured out and talked to fellow-citizens. “He’d make a good actor because he’s loose, and you don’t see the machinery of that loose- ness.” So said Paul Newman, having watched Gorbachev in action, in 1987. As always, Herzog tries to remold his subject into an honorary Herzogian, all quirk and quiddity. But Gorbachev is too solid for that game. (We see a still, in which he stands next to Minnie Mouse. Each has a smile of iron.) He also issues a number of stubborn state- ments, such as “The proposals to end the Cold War first came from the So- viet Union,” that his reverent interlocu- tor is in no mood to contest. Historians of the period will learn nothing new from the movie, yet it remains a stirring enterprise, especially when it peers back, beyond the bright public record of Gor- bachev’s heyday, into the mist of what feels like a distant past. When his father, Sergei, returned from the war, having at one time been reported dead, he em- braced the young Mikhail and said, “We fought until we ran out of fight. That’s how you must live.” In the film, Herzog recites this unforgettable command, while dark birds fly, as if in formation, above the Gorbachev family graves.

NEWYORKER.COM

Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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The New Yorker – May 13, 2019