Director Roach has some experience with political drama like this and his deft touch creates some tantalizing moments. He channels Adam McKay's style (think Vice) in breaking the third wall a bit and using documentary style techniques to make the film feel ripped from the headlines before he mostly settles into more traditional drama by the second half of the film. Bombshell is entertaining and salacious while remaining rather restrained. There is a lot to admire about Bombshell, especially the way it breaks down the nuts and bolts of sexual harassment into digestible chunks. Also to admire are the performances of the leads. Theron, Kidman, and Robbie each giving top notch performances as does Lithgow. Together the cast and film makers look at the subtleties of how men exercise sexual power in corporate America.
But I kept coming back to wanting to see a deeper analysis. The film flirts with this. There are a number of times women in the film say "I'm not a feminist" reminding us of the ways each of them support the power structure that is in place. But it doesn't get into that. I wanted to explore that more. The film inserts a lesbian (closeted liberal) into the mix but never gives her the kind of agency to deconstruct what is going on around her. She too is a victim, in another way. While the film goes to great lengths not to fat shame Ailes, showing that powerful men can be predators even if they don't fit our culture's ideas of sexy, it doesn't get into just how white the power at Fox is.
The film almost deifies Kelly, giving her a hero's arc, a rewarding family with her supportive husband and loving children (she is shown fighting for her daughter's future) but what she is not given is fair treatment. No where do we get into the ways her work has contributed to steering America in a direction where marginalized people are hurt. Even her famous "Santa is white" comments are explained away as if we are too harsh to judge her for her contributions to white washing America. She stands up for her daughter's future but would she otherwise? If it wasn't affecting her directly or if it didn't endanger her blonde progeny would she lift a finger? I would love a look at how the privileged fight for their own rights ensuring that their privilege remains in tact.
Bombshell glosses over looking at how the conservative culture of that corporate world supported that structure of abuse, and completely ignoring how other power issues such as race and sexual orientation play into the dynamics that underlie and support men like Ailes and their control of power. The film does scratch the surface of just how toxic a world Fox News is but never gets deep enough into that world to truly explore how and why those who will suffer in it really stay. Carlson and Kelly for example did horrible things in their careers and were a part of building the world which they then tried to change, but only for themselves, perhaps for women like them.
So for me Bombshell worked to a degree but stopped short of being something richer, something more revealing. Still, it is filled with great performances and one of my favourite scores of the year. There is much about it that makes it worth a watch. Just keep in mind what else is not there.
Bombshell
Starring: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Kate McKinnon, Rob Delaney, Alison Janney, Malcolm McDowell
Director: Jay Roach
Writer: Charles Randolph
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