Mayor Pete
Amazon PrimeWhile Boys State director Jesse Moss will undoubtedly wish to stay within the remit of modern political documentaries, Mayor Pete feels like the inevitably dense choice. Get close to a man at the heart of a large campaign. The great Hunter S. Thompson did it with the late George McGovern, but the output there was grander and had character. Mayor Pete does not. Neither the man at the heart of it all nor the crew behind the camera. Uninspired that may be, it is a decent account of a strange election period for the United States of America. Its emotionally stifled centre is an odd piece of the puzzle, but it is the failure of Moss to keep jabbing at it that and the lack of character Pete Buttigieg provides that leaves Mayor Pete as an empty documentary.
Documentaries are now dependant on the back and forth between subject and director, so much so that the gap between the two should be filled with their own inner conflict. The Amazing Jonathan Documentary and the When Louis Met... series for the BBC are keen, clear examples of how they could work. What Mayor Pete forgets to provide, then, is that conflict. These are two relatively nice people, talking about whatever they like with little dedication and less detail. Why ask Buttigieg all the questions when b-roll news footage will do? It is one of the many discrepancies made by Moss, whose actions and interactions with the Presidential candidate inspire little.
He is a cog in the machine. He has his foibles, his worries and his dedicated press photos that show him interacting with the community he hopes to leapfrog over and into the White House. Mayor Pete lingers close to being a puff piece or press junket far too often. The unbiased nature of the documentarian, that important ability to sit on the fence and let the subject do the talking is impossible here. Mayor Pete is frustrating at the best of times because here is the subject, talking about nothing. It is not his job to get an audience to love or hate him, but to at least be open with them for the benefit of Moss. But it is Moss who should be showing the darker side – if there even is one. Audiences will never know. They are shown the shining smiles of a happy public and little more than that.
It is not entirely Buttigieg’s fault, though. While he will not play up to the cameras, he also understands that answering the sound and well-meaning questions Moss puts to him is a career risk. It is the sad reality of a documentary on the modern politician. It is another washout, and it is no fault of theirs, but the system they find themselves working in. Mayor Pete may be underwhelming and inaccessible, but it feels as though a third party is responsible for that. Neither documentarian nor subject is particularly keen to engage with one another. A war of words never appears, nor does a reconciliation of ideas and practice. Instead, Mayor Pete drifts amiably down the stream of indifferent documentaries, a story worth telling is lost because they do not know how to tell it.