Bombshell limits its grasp with an expansive cast
There is an interesting habit in media consumption right now, brought on by the intense fracturing of the media landscape. It’s been happening for years now, likely since the beginning of cable television, but an abundance of choice has caused audiences to seek out art that reflects their own reality in order to justify their worldview.
To a certain extent, this is what art is supposed to do. Film has long been a collection of values for audiences to identify with, which often drives viewership. But it’s also challenged commonly held ideas, allowing audiences to grow and change with characters on screen.
The divided nature of both our political landscape and our media consumption has led to something of a new phenomenon, something that seems to be a combination of the two. It’s an illusion of a challenge, one that simultaneously justifies beliefs, but makes the audience feel that they are experiencing something difficult.
You can see this in effect with the release of films like Richard Jewell and perhaps to a larger extent, Bombshell. Both films have a commentary on the media. Both fall in line with typical left/right thinking. And while Richard Jewell has suffered justifiable criticism due to accuracy, it tells an important story with that careful, Clint Eastwood eye.
Bombshell tells an important story as well, with less style perhaps, but with as much empathy as it can muster. It is unlikely that the audiences for these films will cross over, which is probably more interesting than either film is on their own. Bombshell, in particular, isn’t especially great filmmaking, but it has a solid cast. It just seems to tell an incomplete story.
The film shows the downfall of Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), the brains behind the conservative Fox News network. Fox has been excoriated in countless films and books, examined and re-examined, and understandably demonized at every turn. Bombshell places these ideas—the management style, the misogyny, the “balance” as it were—very much in the background. The audience for the film already knows much of this.
Instead, the film is character driven, looking directly at the women who work for the agency and their treatment at the hands of the chairman and CEO. More specifically, it focuses on Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), and a fictionalized newcomer named Kayla (Margot Robbie) as they come to terms with standing up for themselves.
Both Carlson and Kelly are well known former Fox personalities, each having been highly criticized by the left for their contributions to the degradation of public discourse we now enjoy.
But Bombshell isn’t interested in demonizing them. There’s a section of the audience who undoubtedly feels self-satisfaction at the way these women were treated. They were working for the enemy after all. But as we’ve seen over the past few years, Fox is not alone in its culture of harassment. It’s an industry wide problem.
This again makes the topic more compelling than the film itself. Bombshell sort of plods its way through the plot points, things the audience already knows, without revealing much we didn’t. Given the insular nature of the Fox apparatus, it’s unlikely that the characterizations of the main characters are exact and it’s hard to know where the inventions are found.
As I said, the film goes easy on Carlson and Kelly. Maybe too easy. But their politics should be beside the point. Neither has had a strong career after this incident. Kelly in particular, had a very public flame out at NBC. Some of this can be attributed poor editorial choices on her show, like giving Alex Jones a platform, but there were other stories.
Stories about her rudeness. Her likability. The way she treated staff and crew.
The film reinforces Ailes habit of leaking stories to make himself look better. There’s no question that he would leak stories to make his enemies look worse. Does anyone really think that he stopped after being removed from his position? Do we really believe that NBC was above the same behavior? The film doesn’t touch on the aftermath, on the future of its characters.
Bombshell shouldn’t have been just a Fox story. It feels too limited in scope. It is only elevated by the actors themselves. The filmmakers wanted to have something to say, but they were too short-sighted to see what it could have been.