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The Deal Film Comment Selects Special Event Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 8pm Q&A and reception with director Stephen Frears follows the screening. “Politicians are here presented as neither crooks, cynics nor fools, but real people with that strange mixture of personal ambition and a genuine desire to leave the world a slightly better place.”--Michael White, The Guardian What’s the difference between the best candidate and the strongest candidate? In this pungent, spirited and quietly devastating prequel to The Queen, writer Peter Morgan and director Stephen Frears tackle this opposition, a cornerstone of media-age politics, by tracing the devolution in the relationship between the old-fashioned and hard-nosed Gordon Brown (David Morrissey) and the “modern,” “upbeat” Tony Blair (Michael Sheen again) from unlikely officemates to fellow MPs to rivals for the leadership of the Labour Party. The drama is one of self-delusion—Blair’s refusal to confront his own ambitions, Brown’s willful ignorance of his brusque awkwardness as a factor in realpolitik—and it’s played out with terrific aplomb by both actors. Morgan and Frears work with amazing deftness and economy: a repeated image of Brown compulsively smoothing down his mop of black hair or a single shot of Blair at home plunking out a few chords on his electric guitar express volumes. The Deal Stephen Frears, UK, 2005; 90m