Sarah Palin: You Betcha!, Sunday, April 29
Sarah Palin Photo: Reuters
ABC2, 8.30pm
This is a remarkable achievement by British documentary maker Nick Broomfield. He manages to make Sarah Palin a sympathetic figure while turning one of the great political stories of the past decade into a dull, self-indulgent film.
Broomfield has made scores of documentaries and a recurring motif is his inability to secure an interview. From Tracking Down Maggie through to Kurt & Courtney and now You Betcha!, Broomfield affects a bumbling, hapless persona, thwarted at every turn as he tries to get close to his subject. Meanwhile, he interviews every disaffected former colleague and unhinged family member he can find. It's unedifying, dishonest and ultimately unsatisfying filmmaking.
Here he stalks Palin's home town of Wasilla, Alaska, interviewing anyone who'll talk to him. Some of the comments from those who worked with Palin on the local council and later when she was state governor are damning, painting a picture of a mercurial, underqualified, ideologically fanatical and vindictive politician. The problem is, virtually all this material has been aired before, without the irritating, attention-seeking authorial intrusions.
There are some interesting moments. When Broomfield manages to ambush Palin at two book signings, it's fascinating to see how effective she is at turning on the charm a skill that goes some way to explain her remarkable rise. But there's too much repetition and too great a reliance on the kind of stunts the Chaser outgrew years ago.
The final scene is particularly self-defeating. As the credits roll, Broomfield plays the infamous 2008 prank call between Palin and a Canadian comedian pretending to be the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. Palin's guilelessness and eventual humiliation i! s painfu l to witness and ultimately evokes sympathy, undercutting all that has gone before.
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