Review: Prime Minister — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Prime Minister

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

Documentary

Directors: Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe

 

You may not know who Jacinda Ardern is, and you probably don’t follow New Zealand politics. But if you’ll just invest two hours getting to know Ardern in this often painfully intimate documentary, she may well become your favorite former world leader, no matter what your party affiliation.

A dynamic figure in New Zealand’s Labour Party from the time she joined Parliament at age 28, Ardern was nevertheless unprepared to find herself suddenly elevated to the position of Labour’s prime minister candidate in 2017.

If you think U.S. democracy is messy, prepare for the byzantine gauntlet Ardern endures on her electoral path. The country’s multiple parties are deadlocked, and it falls to Ardern to try and cobble together a coalition that would support her candidacy. Finally, it all comes down to one minority party leader who, after some dramatic hemming and hawing, throws his support to Ardern.

After the victory, Ardern heads home with her partner (and future husband), Clarke Gayford, a New Zealand TV writer/director who has been capturing the drama on video. Looking into Gayford’s camera, Ardern expresses confidence New Zealanders will be comfortable with their third female PM.

But what will they think, she worries, when they learn this one is pregnant?

Anyone who’s been acquainted with any number of Kiwis — as most New Zealanders like to call themselves — will not be surprised to see that the country takes this new development in stride. Ardern keeps a full schedule of meetings and events throughout her pregnancy, takes the standard maternity leave, and sees her new daughter, Neve, become a national celebrity.

The film’s glimpses into political motherhood are striking. Ardern, for instance, wants to breastfeed her new baby, but the rigors of leadership get in the way. It helps, of course, that the father of that daughter happens to be one of this film’s three cinematographers, but I can’t think of another political documentary that achieves the level of behind-closed-doors familiarity accomplished here.

And that’s not just when it comes to quiet family moments. It appears Ardern never said “no” when it came to documenting moments light and ponderous for this film. When 51 people are murdered by gunmen at two Christchurch mosques, Ardern does not flinch as the camera catches her shedding uncontrollable tears and plunging into a group of survivors, hugging and weeping with abandon. Nor does the lens shy from Ardern’s furious response to the crime as she spearheads a ferocious campaign to ban assault and semiautomatic weapons.

Then comes the event that defined, defeated, and destroyed politicians around the globe: the COVID-19 epidemic. The camera follows Ardern’s early response, promptly closing the borders and imposing a nationwide lockdown. Thanks to New Zealand’s island geography and its people’s one-for-all instincts, by late 2020 COVID virtually disappears in the country. Ardern becomes a worldwide hero; her COVID response a textbook example of proactive governmental success. The prime minister basks in glory. Her approval ratings are among the highest ever for a New Zealand prime minister. Almost in defiance of a world still suffering outside the country’s cocoon, a massive concert is held in the capital of Wellington.

Everyone involved probably wishes the movie could have ended there, but alas, within a month of New Zealand’s supposed victory over COVID, the devilishly contagious Delta variant arrives, and with a vengeance. This time, the Kiwi nation — channeling accusations of government overreach and conspiracy theories that have filtered in from the United States — is less inclined to obediently fall in line.

It is during these passages — with Ardern gazing from her office window, watching raging demonstrators demand her resignation or worse — that Prime Minister captures the inevitable loneliness that can come with elective power. Like all world leaders, Ardern navigates COVID without any sort of map, acting on the advice of experts who are just as flummoxed as she is.

We’ve all seen those paired photos of U.S. presidents — one taken in the first flush of arrival at the Oval Office; another snapped near the end of their terms — grayer, graver, gaunter. In the course of Prime Minister, Ardern seems to age in real time as events beyond her control come pounding on her office door. Seldom has the stark savagery of high office been so graphically documented.

The nature of the parliament/prime minister system seems to have baked-in the element of humiliation. As high as Ardern flew early in her tenure, by late 2022 a tearful Ardern looks at her dismal poll numbers and concludes that New Zealand is ready to move beyond COVID and, by extension, the prime minister who saw the country through it.

Ardern stands in her bedroom, holding up dresses on their hangers.

What, she asks the camera, do you wear to a resignation?

No two countries are alike; none offer hardcore lessons for others when it comes to reconciling the tricky dynamics between a government and its people. Still, through unsurpassed access to a world leader over the course of more than five years, Prime Minister identifies the essential ingredient for successful governance: a sense that the national experience is a storyline held in common by leaders and people alike. Pulling the country together in the wake of a senseless mass shooting, Ardern finds her embrace returned. But after an early COVID success, Ardern fails to fully account for her nation’s dwindling tolerance for draconian measures and plunges on. Ultimately, she may have been right. Alternatively, there may have been wisdom in the shifting popular consensus.

But politics cares little for who’s right or wrong. In the end, Prime Minister tells us, unless everyone feels they’ve had a voice in the writing a nation’s story, even tales of wild success can come to a melancholy end.