This is a documentary about Anthony Weiner\u2019s 2013 campaign for mayor of New York City. At the start of the film\u2013whose makers included a former aide\u2013Weiner has already resigned in disgrace from Congress after a sexting scandal. But he\u2019s back and hungry for his second chance. Spoiler alert, he extremely does not become mayor, because it turns out he was still sending girls raunchy photos of himself after he said he\u2019d stopped. After the movie\u2019s release he pled guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor; he\u2019s currently in a medical\/mental-health prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n # Weiner<\/em> is technically excellent. There are great cuts, usually to the subject\u2019s disadvantage but rarely without some nuance or ambivalence. The movie opens with Weiner, shamed and uncomfortable, one-on-one admitting to the camera, \u201cI guess the punchline is right about me. I did the things. But I did a lot of other things too.\u201d Then we cut to Weiner on the House floor lambasting Republicans<\/a> for blocking health care funds for 9\/11 responders, and he\u2019s loving it<\/em>, he\u2019s yelling, \u201cThis is a shame! A shame!\u201d And nobody needs to say anything really, so the director doesn\u2019t. But this moment, I think, is key to the person portrayed by the movie\u2013a person buoyed by righteous anger and about to be destroyed by it.<\/p>\n A lot of people have remarked on how insistently the film keeps Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton\u2019s deputy chief of staff and Weiner\u2019s wife (though they have since separated), in the frame. Even at the very beginning she\u2019s got this dreading, lips-turned-downward expression. She, or the version of her crafted by these shots and cuts, is bracing herself for the campaign. Then it starts to go well, believe it or not, it starts to look like other people also see her husband as something more than a schmuck, and we see her laughing and smiling. And then things get very bad and she cuts him no quarter, she\u2019s damaged and baffled and she lets it show.<\/p>\n This is pretty obviously a documentary about what it\u2019s like to craft a \u201cnonfictional\u201d public self: a documentary about what it\u2019s like to let somebody make a documentary about you. There\u2019s a bit where Weiner rants about what it means to be a fly on the wall, which is perfect grim comedy, and there\u2019s a quick tragic bit when the director asks Abedin how she\u2019s doing and she says, \u201cIt\u2019s like living a nightmare.\u201d And then creates for him a dazzling, lacerating smile, and walks away.<\/p>\n I know you know it is a mask<\/em>, she says, and I know you know what\u2019s under the mask. But you can\u2019t ever know what\u2019s underneath that<\/strong><\/em>. It\u2019s self-exposure as self-protection, it\u2019s vulnerability as a power move, it\u2019s performing intimacy to maintain distance, it is glory in humiliation, if anything like this ever happens to me I can only hope I will be as ferociously camp.<\/p>\n # But because I\u2019m me, I started out sort of miserably identifying instead with Weiner because I\u2019m (\u2026I hope) pretty aware of various scummy and hurtful things I\u2019ve done, and the thought of those things becoming a 24\/7 news cycle spectator sport is horrific.<\/p>\n And apparently that makes me his constituency! One of the amazing things about Weiner<\/em> is that the guy, maybe without realizing this would happen, became a kind of icon of other people\u2019s secret shames and disgraces, and once he started sticking up for himself (sorry) he was transitively sticking up for them. There\u2019s a great scene where Weiner is at an AARP forum, and another candidate tries to score points off him by talking about \u201cAmerican values.\u201d And the old folks boo him! They turn on him, they see the self-righteousness and they feel it directed against them<\/em>. In this way Weiner\u2019s campaign sometimes successfully weaponized meta-Pharisaism<\/a>, which is sort of breathtaking. There\u2019s a lot of self-righteous condemnation of self-righteousness in this movie\u2013and here I am self-righteously condemning that<\/em>. It\u2019s almost as if sin is an ever-tightening barbed-wire circle from which we can\u2019t cut ourselves free!<\/p>\n No, so then, having lost on the FAMILY VALUES front, the AARP-forum guy pivots, bitterly castigating the crowd for siding with \u201ca glib narcissist.\u201d That\u2019s an interpretation of Weiner\u2019s life that the film takes seriously\u2013as does Weiner himself in a brief discourse so articulate it might even seem\u2026 glib. There\u2019s a disturbing scene, mentioned in many reviews, where Weiner is watching himself on TV. He\u2019s rapt and smiling. Abedin in the background is appalled. But even once she\u2019s conveyed that he acted poorly in this clip, and she wants none of it, he can\u2019t keep from watching, and he can\u2019t keep from showing his satisfaction.<\/p>\n The film throws out a few obvious answers as to \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d: Maybe it\u2019s sex addiction (language Weiner is spectacularly uncomfortable with\u2013all these normal people always say celebrities call themselves sex addicts because it\u2019s the easy way out, and I don\u2019t think they have any idea what it\u2019s like to actually say that about yourself). Maybe all politicians have an unhealthy craving for attention. But what struck me was how much of Weiner\u2019s positive self-image is about righteous anger. That\u2019s what he\u2019s watching in that creepy TV-absorption scene, he\u2019s watching himself yell and \u201cfight back\u201d and battle for dominance, full of certainty. He is extremely, at that moment, high on his own supply.<\/p>\n It has got to be incredibly hard to admit a loss of self-control, especially such a personal, pathetic one (he never even meets these girls!), when your whole shtik is being the guy who exposes and condemns others\u2019 venality. Even his scandal offered\u2013at first\u2013a chance to expose the judgmentalism of others.<\/p>\n It failed because if you become an avatar of the possibility of personal transformation people will burn your ass alive<\/em> if you didn\u2019t really change. If people project their own desire for a triumphant redemption story onto you, you cannot expect their mercy when you turn that story into another sad tale of self-deception and relapse.<\/p>\n # The righteous anger was part of what people wanted in Weiner the candidate, Weiner the rising star. They wanted a guy who \u201cdemolishes, destroys\u201d the opposition, all those clickbait verbs. Maybe that\u2019s a narcotic for more people than the guy who\u2019s pushing it?<\/p>\n # On that note, check out how seamlessly the language of \u201cnot cowering,\u201d \u201cnot in a defensive crouch\u201d shifts from being about Democratic political anger to being about Weiner\u2019s response to his sex scandal.<\/p>\n # Their poor shaved cat. They have one of those longhaired cats you have to periodically shave so it won\u2019t be just a giant ball of filthy matted fur. Their poor shaved cat is the film\u2019s build-your-own-metaphor.<\/p>\n # Ways in which Anthony Weiner is like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump simultaneously: He has 64 policies on his website and exactly zero people care. They do in fact prefer someone who \u201cwill gladly accept the mantle of anger<\/a>\u201d to someone who has a bunch of technocratic policies for managing our lives better. (Oh, there\u2019s an awful Trump cameo in this, because of course there is.)<\/p>\n