THE MOVIE: Our Brand Is Crisis THE DIRECTOR: Rachel Boynton THE STARS: James Carville, Jeremy Rosner, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada One of the recent “hot docs” on the film festival circuit, the provocative “Our Brand is Crisis” by first-time feature director Rachel Boynton thrusts us into the fray of the 2002 presidential election in Bolivia to illustrate how candidates in foreign countries can be neatly packaged and sold by American strategists-for-hire. The film follows seemingly well-intentioned and undoubtedly well-compensated operatives from the Washington D.C.- based consulting outfit GCS (headed by noted Bill Clinton strategist James Carville) as they travel to South America to turn unpopular former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (aka, Goni) into a viable candidate.
Though Goni is trailing two populist candidates by a wide margin at the film’s outset, GCS strategist Jeremy Rosner and his team are confident victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat by “branding” Goni — who was raised and educated in the U.S. — as the panacea for all that ails Bolivia, first and foremost its devastating economic crisis. In a move that some, if not all of the principals must surely now regret, Boynton was granted almost unlimited access to the war room.
So we see firsthand how smear campaigns are hatched — a week before the election, unverified information about an opposing candidate’s potentially shady financial dealings is surreptitiously leaked to the press — and how focus groups are used to inform virtually every campaign decision. The devaluation of open, honest dialogue in modern politics is exposed throughout as Goni is repeatedly reminded to “stay on point” and avoid discussing anything that deviates from the branding effort. “Crisis” suffers a bit from redundancy — by the fifth focus group session I was ready to scream “I Get it!” — but this is a minor quibble with an otherwise excellent documentary that raises many interesting questions about political salesmanship and the incestuous relationship between Americanized democracy and capitalism. The film has low-budget look and feel (not a bad thing, either), and Boynton and her intrepid camera crew managed to capture some incredible images of rioting in the streets. (Not rated. Running time: 87 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 4, 2006. Read the original PDF.