Politics and the Movies: Art Anticipating Life.

• Author: Strada, Michael J.

"Wag the Dog" and "Primary Colors" are the latest films that reflect today's headlines.

It is axiomatic that art imitates life, and vice versa. A more intriguing proposition is that sometimes art goes one better--it anticipates life. In the process of satirizing American political culture, two movies released in 1997-98 are reminders that filmmakers occasionally get far enough ahead of the curve to make viewers gawk in disbelief. Since the American mind-set comfortably is grounded in the linear thinking of cause and effect, this phenomenon of art anticipating life represents a paradox. If most feature films take about two years to move from concept to release, what is to be made of scripts that seem like they were culled from this morning's headlines, thus defying the two-year time lag?

Humans are especially prone to laughing at those aspects of the cultural subconscious that most unsettle them. Political satirists have joined media pundits in the parade fixating on the multiple ironies associated with Mike Nichols' "Primary Colors" and Barry Levinson's "Wag the Dog." When movies manage to transcend time and space, they make people uncomfortable enough to want to discount them. Both "Primary Colors" and "Wag the Dog" hit the multiplexes with eerie timeliness.

In "Wag the Dog," humor comes at the expense of a president accused of molesting a "firefly girl" (sort of a post-graduate Girl Scout) in the Oval Office. Since viewers never see this president's face or hear his voice, they naturally complete the mental gestalt by substituting the current U.S. president in their mind's eye. This process does not suffer from the presence of the Monica Lewinskys and Kathleen Willeys of this world. The beleaguered president reacts to the charges against him by turning things over to the king of all spin doctors, Conrad Breen (Robert De Niro), whose elegant solution marries image to reality in a smoke-and-mirrors war against Albanian nuclear terrorists. "Wag the Dog" was released at the apex of the Clinton Administration's military confrontation with Iraq's Saddam Hussein over nuclear weapons inspections, and shortly before UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stole the show from the U.S. by brokering an eleventh-hour peaceful settlement. When Clinton followed within two days of his August, 1998, grudging admission to the nation concerning the Lewinsky affair by ordering the bombing of terrorist bases in Afghanistan and the Sudan, few commentators failed to cite the "Wag the Dog" scenario.

The depiction of the president in "Primary Colors," by contrast, requires zero imagination from the audience. Based on Joe Klein's popular inside look at Bill Clinton's 1992 primary campaigns, this film presents real-life near-clones as protagonists. John Travolta plays an underdog southern governor named Jack Stanton whose hair, waistline, accent, philandering ways, empathy for human pathos, and ability to tell all manner of lies with a straight face and a tickle in his voice border on blatant impersonation. Stanton is willing to lie in order to win office and do good for the common folks for whom he cares deeply.

Ambivalence permeates the likable, but roguish Stanton character throughout this picture that comes down with feet planted firmly on both sides of the fence. Somewhat more in-your-face are Emma Thompson's portrayal of tough, wily First Lady Susan Stanton and the perfect casting of Billy Bob Thornton as the campaign strategist based on James Carville. During the Florida primary, it becomes known that Stanton has slept with his teenaged babysitter. Nichols bought the screen rights to "Primary Colors" in 1996, and the film appeared in the midst of the Lewinsky contretemps in the winter of 1997-98.

The idea that some movies anticipate the fears and obsessions of the American psyche is quite apparent when revisiting another film oozing satire, Stanley Kubrick's 1964 sardonic comedy, "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." Kubrick's uncompromising plot revolves around a nuclear attack, without warning or presidential authorization, against the Soviet Union. This anti-war picture makes a mockery of the deterrence logic of the suicide pact known as mutually assured destruction (MAD).

The...