Weiner

Greetings again from the darkness. Normally I would have no interest in a movie with this title, but in this case, it's a chance to get a glimpse into the psychological make-up of a guy who obliterated his own political career … by simply being unable to keep his privates private. The end result of the efforts from filmmakers Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg is nearly unrestricted access to a NYC mayor candidate's campaign, as well as a look at a politician that is at times tense, and other times funny (in a laughing AT you kind of way).

In 2011, seven-term New York Congressman Anthony Weiner resigned in the aftermath of a sexting scandal made worse by (what else?) … his lying and attempted cover-up. The film begins with a clip of one of Weiner's explosive speeches, meant to portray his expertise as a legislator and politician. This is quickly followed by the pun-filled headlines that exposed his sexting habit, seemingly leaving his political career in the dust.

Picking up two years later, the film finds the disgraced former Congressman running a campaign for NYC mayor. We can't be too surprised as we have learned numerous times that many politicians are addicted to power and life in the public eye. What makes this an interesting subject is two-fold: how publicly humiliated Weiner had been, and the fact that his wife is Huma Abedin, long-time Hillary Clinton adviser and aide.

We don't learn how it happened, but we do find Anthony and Huma are still married, are parents to a young child (she was pregnant when the first scandal hit), and that Huma fully supports his mayoral candidacy. As the campaign kicks off, Weiner is a frontrunner, proving that we are a forgiving lot. The cameras capture him in full candidate mode – making calls to potential donors, giving speeches, dealing with staffers, and working the crowds at his energy-filled parades. Of course, it's all a façade … or at least half of one.

When the second sexting scandal hits and "Carlos Danger" makes headlines as Weiner's online pseudonym, the real trainwreck begins, and we find it impossible to turn away. It's at this point where our feelings are confirmed … Huma is by far the more interesting of these two personality polar opposites. Where Weiner is two-faced – bouncing between humbled and overly ambitious; Huma is cool, collected and (seemingly) smart.

Weiner remains clueless about his chances, and the level of tension skyrockets in meetings and during spousal moments. It's impossible not to believe that the energies used towards the campaign would have been better spent in therapy – both individual and as a couple. His stream of lies proved he had not changed his ways, and his periodic reflective and apologetic moments are diminished by his true color nastiness, which is more pervasive.

The film gets unnecessarily sidetracked during a segment that features one of Weiner's phone sex relationships – codenamed "Pineapple". Entirely too much time is spent on her pathetic publicity grab, and fortunately it all falls flat. It is a reminder that the media never misses a chance to film a frenzy … even if they have to manipulate it. There is no room in a documentary for TWO trainwrecks! After the film and the irresistible draw of watching this ego-driven dude never once come to grips with why he is socially unacceptable as a leader, we realize there are unanswered questions. Why did Huma stick with her husband? Why was she onboard with him getting back in the game … did she really miss the public eye? The filmmaker flat out asks Weiner "Why have you let me film this?" Perhaps the answer to that last question is somewhat explained when you know that Anthony Weiner made an appearance in "Sharknado 3". Some people just need the spotlight.

The hecklers, the eye rolls, the angry outbursts all lead up to Lawrence O'Donnell asking Weiner "What's wrong with you?" I asked myself that same question after the movie when I realized that I was mesmerized the entire time. As for Huma ever allowing herself to be the subject of a documentary, we can only assume that she is too sagacious to allow such unfettered camera access to her work. I suppose her appearance in the next "Sharknado" is equally unlikely.

Everybody knows that politics and political figures are so common with scandal, corruption, and bribes, and you guessed it sex scandals! And the world again was rocked with one Anthony Weiner! This eye opening and interesting film called "Weiner" looks at how the media and scandal of texts and photos and nude pictures help bring down a former congressman and mayoral candidate. The news footage is nearly from every network and the interviews are a compelling saga and the way the camera follows around Anthony and wife Huma is so interesting as you the viewer can feel the tension and pain between the two as the scandals break, and the speak and words from the mouth of Weiner confirm that he is a destroyed and beaten man. Most of you who follow the news know the story in 2010 a hacker and media outlet had broke news that Anthony Weiner had texted and snapped pictures of his erect and hard penis thru his underwear and the incident would cause him to resign from congress and then later in 2013 when he got back in the game or his "New York Grove" the next scandal hit online on a website from a source a young girl named Sydney Leathers who's an attractive big breasted girl that exchanged text nude pictures and even admitted to phone sex with Anthony. And you guessed it this would destroy his mayoral campaign and political life, yet thru it all Huma would stand by her man. Overall near excellent film that shows how a vice when revealed and exposed can destroy your profession and bring you down in life never being the same as some like Anthony Weiner never learn as the habit is so hard to break!

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner gets caught in a sexting scandal and resigns in June 2011. He decides to reenter politics by running for Mayor of New York. His campaign in the Democratic primary in 2013 starts to pick up speed when a second sexting scandal erupts. His wife Huma Abedin again comes to his side but the campaign flounders. Weiner is no doubt a compelling Shakespearian tragic figure. Once his scandal erupts again, this gets very uncomfortable at times. The central star becomes the mysterious Huma. In some respects, she's the Spinx holding back her secrets. In other respects, her looks could kill and she speaks volumes with her silence.

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." Blaise Pascal

"Man, you're all full of **** anyway." Passerby on street

"Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh Heheheheheheh Weiner..." Beavis & Butt-head (probably)

I feel like these three quotes kind of sum up a lot of what this movie, Weiner, a documentary that chronicles as a harrowing, cringe-inducing tragedy of politician Anthony Weiner's failed bid for the 2013 Mayoral race in New York city, is going for, but only part of it. You can look at what the filmmakers present from different angles - as a portrait of a media that, due to how it operates (especially in New York city with the Daily News and Post and everything under the sun) in reporting the 'news' of this or that or the other with Weiner's sexting as "Carlos Danger", and how this media obsession perpetuates things further and further (technology itself is part of it - imagine what would've happened if things were only 10 or 15 years before this), or of course as a portrait of a man and his marriage which we see glimpses of in quiet looks and stares and things that the (mostly) fly-on-the-wall filmmakers get.

What you think about Weiner ahead of time may influence you going in. Or if you don't know much about him outside of the Daily Show and Colbert Report skits it may be educational in that way of recent/contemporary history. I think that the movie is fair in that it shows ALL the coverage - both the bytes in the various cable news coverage and things like Weiner's appearance on Lawrence O'Donnell where he was asked point blank "What's *wrong* with you?" - while showing Weiner in both the (semi good) early run-up when he started his campaign and, indeed, had a lead to start with, and then as he kept his composure much as he could while the second scandal blew up and wouldn't go away.

Could it have gone away? No, probably (or definitely) not, and the question of should or shouldn't he have dropped out of the race comes to mind. But the coverage of it all in this film is uncanny. At times you'll wonder how they got a camera in such a place, or how, up until the moment the filmmakers are told to get out of a room, they stay there until told to leave (or on the flip-side the very funny moment when in a car the director happens to ask a particular touchy question and Weiner can't help but go off on the guy, like "Is THIS what you mean by 'fly on the wall?') A lot of the humor that does come up is in that pitch-black, uncomfortable way that goes far beyond anything you'd ever see on Louie or Curb Your Enthusiasm. And the cringing isn't always funny - sometimes it comes down to the look two people have with nothing being said out loud and everything being said in the eyes.

One of the things that is hard to not come away with, whether by the end you feel some modicum of sympathy (or, hell, even empathy if that's possible) with Weiner from this period of time, is that he's not your average politician or, I should say, one that is the usual type we might think of as a politician. Usually they come off as stiff, bought and paid for or at the least handled to such a degree as to seem inhuman, or try to come off as "wholesome" and yet say the most monstrous things.

Weiner was/is a liberal, but you get someone who can talk in reasoned tones except when, well, things p*** him off (his entree into the spotlight came in his time as Congressman when he exclaimed "I will NOT yield" during a debate on a 9/11 responders bill), or when he is confronted by someone. We see him not back down from people, whether it's hard questions at a City Island campaign stop or a heckler in a deli. The guy is tough, and yet there's also a self-deprecating humor at times. And he'll even watch things like the O'Donnell clip - extended version online, of course - just to get motivated to start his day. What a pair of... oh, nevermind.

And yet at the same time what I love about the movie is that it shows that he can't escape, and really liked to be a part of, the whole 'game' of it, the act. When he does an ad for TV it feels like he's acting for the camera, and seeing the footage from this ad in its finished form intercut with his wife sitting by the side looking a mixture of bored and (maybe) frustrated is astonishing. It's difficult not to leave the movie with some judgment of him, and at the same time the trick of this is that it presents him in (as much as possible) the full, er, 'package' (sorry, puns are unavoidable, I tried). The point is if you like to see the nitty gritty political maneuvering and how a mind works in the midst of a scandal, this is a serious delight (both serious and delightful).

PS: Recently Weiner's retracted how he feels in the documentary and wishes he hadn't made the movie and won't watch it. The latter is fair, while the former is... well, who knows.

"I did a lot of things. But I did a lot of other things, too." Anthony Weiner

The tragicomic story of seven-term congressman from New York, Anthony Weiner, is almost too absurd to be true. After resigning from Congress over sexting, while waging a vigorous 2013 campaign for mayor of NYC, Weiner is disclosed to have texted again visions of his maleness to other women than his wife, Huma Abedin. The tragedy is that this aide to then Senator Hillary Clinton is an accomplished woman, totally undeserving the abject humiliation her husband's sexting has caused her.

Filmmakers Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg in this fascinating doc called Weiner gained permission from him to film his most intimate moments of the campaign, especially with his wife while his tech-straying disgrace is made public. While for us commoners, such peccadilloes amount to little in a public forum (but much, of course, in the personal arena), these moments are heart-rending to see: This accomplished wife forces herself, with barely a smile, to support her husband.

The ancient Greeks knew well the flaws and foibles of celebrities gone wild. In this revelation of hubris, an overweening pride that comes before the fall, even the tragedians might not have dared to show the Congressman sexting even after his initial exposure (so to speak). Yes, he sends photos of his masculinity to a 22 year old woman, who will complete his ignominy by revealing them to a press overjoyed at a second round.

The despair is that he had seemingly come back into the good graces of the public, only to be outed again and lose that support and the mayoral primary to Bill DeBlasio. The documentary is there for the grand moments of revelation and shame, none more poignant than privately with his wife, who seems almost shell-shocked by the new revelation.

Unfortunately, the quotes at the beginning of this review are the most insight we ever get, despite the filmmakers' intimacy, to help us understand why such a gifted populist should so carelessly toss away his position and reputation. Perhaps his wife's mute incredulity stands for our own.

In the end we must conclude with a saying never more appropriate than here: "Who knows the secrets of the human heart?"