"Weiner" Review

Weiner is a documentary film directed by Josh Kriegman and Elysa Steinberg that follows former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner's campaign for Mayor of New York City in the fall of 2013 after (and at one point during) a major scandal where Weiner was found to be sexting several different young women and tweeting pictures of his wiener to them that forced him to resign from the Senate. The film gives a wildly uncensored look at the inner workings of his oft-troubled campaign, and the personal lives of both Anthony and his wife Huma, both of whom enjoyed considerable success in American politics before Anthony's sexting crisis. We're also given insight into Weiner's opponents, the mainstream news media's coverage of the scandal, as well as the general New York popular opinion of Weiner which fluctuated constantly during his campaign. What follows is probably the most entertaining, intriguing, and bafflingly candid documentaries about an American political figure probably that I've ever seen.


Weiner is an absolute roller-coaster to watch. The film actually spends surprisingly little time on pointing out the unfortunate pairing of Anthony's surname with the general subject matter of his downfall. Instead, we get an intensely intimate portrait of a man constantly gasping for attention that has a bit of a sexual addiction which has led to a frequently fractured marriage and an even more frequently fractured political career. This is all presented in such a candid and brilliant way that the film often exudes the same kind of hilarious vicarious embarrassment felt in the awkward situations of the best episodes of The Office, although here it's all real life.

Directors Kriegman and Steinberg are very careful to allow the viewer to feel genuine empathy toward Anthony Weiner, while also realizing the absolute scumbagginess of his actions. This is a very refreshingly unbiased political documentary - so much so that I don't even think it should be called a "political documentary", so much as just a documentary about politics. The film acknowledges why Weiner was popular before the scandal; he was a Democratic senator who, rather than engaging in pleasantries with his opponents, angrily and often rudely called out Republicans for what he perceived as inaction and negligence to help middle-class Americans. He's driven in a way that seems untouched by financial favors or self-interest and seems to genuinely want to try and fix problems, albeit very obviously trying to garner as much media attention to himself as possible in the process.

Then we all saw his dick. The scandal derails his marriage and his political career, but after a few years, Anthony decides that his quest for helping the working man (and/or his endless need for attention) had not yet been finished, and could be properly resumed now that he had faded from the public eye. His campaign gets off to a rocky start, his marriage even rockier, but he insists on the issues and insists on his moral compass, and his campaign team orchestrates a marketing strategy to reconvince the American people that Anthony Weiner's days of promiscuity are over and that he's getting back to working for Americans. Of course, though, Anthony Weiner's life is nothing if not filled with scandal and public outcry.

And the viewer gets a front-row seat to every blistering drop in polls, every painfully awkward meeting with the campaign staff, every deafeningly silent glares between Anthony and his wife, and every tiny cog being turned so carefully within Anthony's mayoral campaign to convince the American people that he won't let them down again, a promise that eventually even Anthony himself admits he can't say he'll keep. There's a widely known theory that most politicians are sociopaths built to absorb power, respect, validation, or at least attention, and while Weiner isn't the slimiest example, his need for attention - be it from the news media with his belligerent onscreen tirades or from young women eager to give him a vote in exchange for dick pics - is always his downfall. And he knows it. And it destroys him. And we see all of it.

And that is what makes Weiner such an uncommonly compelling documentary. At one point toward the end of the film, after a run-in with a previous sexting partner attempting to run something of a smear campaign and a particularly cold argument with Huma at the campaign's end, the man behind the camera speaks for the first time, asking Anthony, "Why did you let me film all this?" While later Anthony says he hopes the documentary will help people understand his plight in trying to fix problems as a politician but always being dragged down by his own demons and the admittedly vicious news media and political punditry, his facial expressions and immediate answer indicate that he really doesn't know. He supposes, we surmise, that he just can't keep his face off any camera put in front of him, even if it reveals him to be a bad person.

Honestly, allowing Kriegman and Steinberg to make this film was one of the best decisions Anthony Weiner could ever make. Not only do we get an intriguing look at the inner workings of a political campaign, but also the turmoil ravaged on both the political and personal life of a man whose flaws are constantly pushed back on him by a media that craves scandal and a political landscape that craves dominance over the opponent, resulting in an endlessly entertaining and thought-provoking character study, as well as one of the best documentaries of the last several years. It may get an A+ upon a second viewing.

Grade: A