It's not an easy gig, but Anthony Weiner was sure he could handle it. After all, he blew up on the internet after a passionate speech he gave regarding a new health care bill went viral, he was now seen as the won't-back-down crusader among the Democratic party. His star was ascending, it all seemed good....and then the sexting scandal broke out. A nude photo of his leaked onto his Twitter, revealing that he had been having affairs on his wife, and the subsequent fallout (which included him outright lying about the pictures at first) tarnished his reputation to a point that many thought he couldn't come back.
Well, Weiner chronicles Anthony Weiner trying to do just that, as he attempts to run for the office of Mayor Of New York City. It appears this documentary was at first simply trying to capture on film Anthony Weiner's attempts at gaining back a political foothold amidst the scandals that had destroyed his reputation, which would have been plenty interesting on their own. In these early scenes of the movie, watching Weiner try to win over voters by dialing up the charm and emphasizing his status as a family man (one of his early ads heavily showcases his wife and their infant child) proves to be a fascinating experience since it's impossible to shake off the slimy calculated nature of these early efforts as Weiner tries to weasel his way back into people's hearts.
And then the uncovering of further sexting conversations between Weiner and other women emerge and the entire documentary goes from being an examination of what goes into a potential comeback and transforms into basically watching someone (to use a well-worn phrase) rearrange the folding chairs on the Titanic while it's sinking. The entire political campaign he's staged in an upheaval and just watching his various staffers react in shock and betrayal to this newest scandal is on its own a pretty devastating visual, as you immediately see all of the people that Anthony Weiner has let down with his newest transgressions.
But it's in his wife, Huma Abedin, that the most quiet and most powerful effects of Weiner's actions can be seen. You can just tell from the way she composes herself and her body language after this newest scandal breaks out that she feels defeated, that she put her trust in her husband to improve himself and he failed to live up to that trust. There's this great shot midway through the movie where Anthony Weiner is watching this interview of himself lambasting at a reporter on the computer on the far left side of the shot and he's got this gleeful facial expression on his face, proud of himself for fighting back. And then, on the far right side of the shot, there's Huma, just looking forlorn and lost, trapped in a situation she didn't ask for and with a man whose now treating her more like a political prop than a human being.
That's a powerful image that the two individuals behind this documentary, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, capture and there's swaths of this kind of revealing and fascinating footage captured throughout the documentary that really let you into the psyche of Anthony Weiner and those closest to him during this intense upheaval that basically destroyed any chance of this potential political comeback coming to fruition. It's all edited together in a compact manner that allows the simmering intensity of the entire campaign to feel easily discernable thanks to the extremely revealing and non-sugar-coated footage that the documentary utilizes. Hell, by the end of Weiner, one of the two people behind this documentary even outright asks Anthony Weiner "Why are you letting me film all of this?" And all Weiner can do is just shake his head. Perhaps, at this point, Anthony Weiner has spent so much time as a politician in the spotlight that he feels OK having his public image dying in the spotlight as well.
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