Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In an age of political pygmies and silent observers often too scared to say the wrong thing in case it hurts in the popularity stakes, to look back upon the series of debates which overshadowed the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968 is to step into another world.
Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s Best of Enemies is one of those documentaries that comes out of nowhere but delights the political beast inside from the first reels and stays to conquer with its juicy commentary and ravishing pay off; it is a documentary that many might shy away from but it is to their detriment that they do so.
Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. were such polar opposites that they could barely be placed into the same state together without the animosity flooding through and the words of intellectual giants being bandied back and forth in some sort of karmic worded table tennis match, each outdoing the other in politely sounding but scathing insults. It is into the arena of the American conventions of 1968 that these two men were hired by ABC Television to pass comment and raise the standard of the least popular television channel in America. It was a move that was pure and enlightening gold.
To watch the documentary is to transport the cinema goer to another time, the liberal writer and arch nemesis of the right in America going up against a man whose political thinking could cause nerves to start sounding alarm bells and to whom is credited in part for getting Ronald Regan elected President. Gore Vidal, the writer of such books as Julian, Lincoln, Burr and the sensationalist Hollywood satire Myra Breckinridge, a man to whom it seems the modern generation has shamefully forgotten, took on, perhaps with little hope as the Democratic Party had lost its one true star capable of taking on Richard Nixon when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated a couple of months before, the march of the right of American politics and its leading spokesman William F. Buckley Jr.
The highlights of the debates are fascinating to watch as psychologically from the start, the use of first name endearment, placed with tongue firmly in cheek, of Mr. Buckley’s first name throughout placed Gore Vidal on the front foot. It is though to the final moments of the debates surrounding the Democratic Party convention that the real punch comes along as the verbal sparring becomes so heated that tempers finally flare up and the mask of one comes loose. Inflammatory words that would not be allowed to be heard in today’s more astute climate are heard and the sheer delight that must have been felt in the offices of ABC would have been seismic as their rating doubled overnight to a then unheard of peak of over seven million.
The debate passed into history and so have Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. but as Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s documentary shows sometimes the Best of Enemies can bring out the best in memorable and absorbing television.
A fantastic documentary, one filled with such political insight to a world that now seems forgotten except for its aftermath.
Ian D. Hall