Truth

There is a moment when Truth, the drama about the forged documents that ended the careers of anchor Dan Rather and 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes, stops tipping its hand and simply spreads its cards, preschooler style, all over the screen.

As other outlets begin questioning the authenticity of memos that CBS presented as proof that President George W. Bush was derelict in his National Guard duty, Mapes starts scrolling through their comment sections. She sees what we are supposed to assume is invective from right-wing posters. They call her ugly, feminazi, liberal, and her hands begin to shake. Then her eyes fix on the words “gut the witch.” For a moment she can’t move or breathe. She slams her laptop shut and backs away with an expression of horror.

This is supposed to be a hardened news veteran in the biggest of the broadcast big leagues? Yet a few internet trolls send her into a tailspin?

It’s in this emotionally manipulative moment and a few others like it that Truth, rated R for bad language, belies its title and makes it clear that it was created to mount a defense rather than offer insight into a fiasco.

You can’t blame Cate Blanchett. As Mapes, she is as overly zealous, defensive, and self-pitying as we would expect the person at the center of a scandal like this to be. Had she given the same performance in a movie with even an ounce of impartiality, Truth would have been a cautionary tale for the ages. It is not.

Instead, Truth joins Mapes in her rationalizations, glossing over every moment of journalistic malpractice (or possibly willful character assassination) as little more than bookkeeping errors. The movie fails to provide any context for understanding Dan Rather’s culpability. Was it hubris? Did years of veneration convince him he was untouchable? Or did he simply no longer concern himself with the details of the stories he reported? Played by Robert Redford with a tedious air of nobility, Truth substitutes an icon for a real man. And a “narrative” for a real story.