Review of In the Loop (2009) by Tom M — 29 May 2010

One of the more telling indictments of the political process in latter-day blighty. Whilst this might have been more incendiary satire were Bush and Blair still around, the issues of course remain live and urgent. Great performances from Capaldi, Hollander etc., capturing the millieu of the New Labour years so well; spin doctor bullies rampaging at all costs for party line purity to be maintained; hapless, out-of-touch ministers and advisors vacillating, always bought off. It is very funny indeed - Iannucci's flair for language leaping off the screen at many points.

The film is generally focused on the dangerous absurdities of the 'special relationship', with starstruck Brits lapping up anything as long as it's American. The contrast provided by the scenes of the minister's Northampton constituent (played with an air of protean absurdity by Steve Coogan) is crucially problematic. It expresses the distance of politics from the people, if all politicians will see are individual cranks obsessed with fences - their own tiny bit of turf. This scene ridicules the petty-mindedness in so much of our culture, yet doesn't justify the politicians' disdain. If you do not engage locally, you are politically lost. If you look down on the public and expect the worst of people, the worst will come. This film indicts the tabloid politics we have been fed gradually over the last 40 years, while not quite being able to imagine anything different. See as a prelude Joseph Strick's "The Hecklers" (1966) for its portrayal of British politics when it still connected with the people, when ideas and argument and talking still mattered in the mainstream.