LITTLE ROCK — In a year that’s been full of very good documentaries (maybe the best year ever for docs, some have suggested) Alex Gibney’s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, is another one.
It’s a very interesting film, though it sort of bothers me that I didn’t already know most of what it had to tell me. I wonder if the proliferation of junk news on television has driven these kind of stories into the arthouse theaters. (Maybe that’s something to come back to later - right now I’ve got a movie to review.)
Spitzer, as you probably remember, was the crusading, moralistic New York attorney general and governor who was brought low by a sex scandal in 2008. Basically, The New York Times reported the then governor had spent two hours with a $1,000-an-hour call girl, and over a period of six months, had used the services of the escort service to which she was attached seven or eight times, paying more than $15,000.
Client 9 makes the case that Spitzer’s political enemies might have contributed to his downfall, and given the level of vitriol certain Spitzer-haters - like former American International Group Chief Executive Officer Maurice Greenberg, - it’s not hard to believe that’s true. Spitzer was (and is) a polarizing figure who projects what many perceive as an air of smug superiority. Even those who agree with him politically might read him as a jerk.
But Spitzer refuses to rise to Gibney’s bait when he’s offered a chance to make excuses, to explain his fall in terms of smashmouth realpolitik. It was, Spitzer says, his own hubris that led to his disgrace: “I did what I did, and shame on me.”
As a case study, Client 9 may be a little premature. Spitzer is still a relatively young man and he’s very busy rehabbing his public image (appearing on CNN and writing for, among others, Slate). But it’s a fine look behind the headlines, the sort of in-depth piece that network news departments used to take on and - more importantly - we used to watch.
MovieStyle, Pages 38 on 12/17/2010