Review of Weiner (2016) by Walter P — 02 Jul 2016

I approached the movie unaware the second part of Anthony Weiner's political career when he ran for mayor of NYC, but I did recall his sexting scandal that precipitated his congressional fall from grace. I thought perhaps it would be a story about his contrition and redemption. I was wrong. The filmmaker captured Anthony Weiner's true colors as an unrepentant narcissist whose continued sexting lead to his campaign's destruction, huge marital strain and shameful defeat in the mayor's race. His behavior throughout the movie showed his is a big swindler: a swindler of the public's hearts and minds for votes, a swindler of friends, contributors and political benefactors of their substantial financial contributions, but worse a swindler of his wife's, Huma, heart and trust. At that time she was an aide to Hillary Clinton, and his antics were definitely not helping her career.

The bigger story, for me, was Huma and how she was being used in his campaign and how he betrayed her trust again and again. From what we were shown, she handled her despicable situation without drama and very professionally. In multiple scenes you could clearly see by her actions and expression she was trapped, disappointed, frustrated, desperate, and hopeless knowing he was headed to ruin and could pull her down. I thought the subtext about what was happening to her was more intriguing, honestly Anthony slick, insincere self-promotion got old quickly and was sickening at times. Huma clearly didn't know the man she married: I suspect when they first met and early on she was charmed by this slick confidence man and likely thought they would grow to be a top-notch power couple in DC. It would be nice to have seen more development of Huma perspective of the story, especially as her awareness of who he was and the consequences on her life, marriage and career. Wiener part-2 Huma's Story could be much more interesting.