FILMS/
THE DEAL
Tributes
England, 2003, 90 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sat, May 5 / 01:00 / Kabuki / AWAR05K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Stephen Frears
- prod
-
Christine Langdon
- scr
-
Peter Morgan
- cam
-
Alwin H. Kuchler
- editor
-
Lucia Zucchetti
- mus
-
Nathan Larson
- cast
-
Michael Sheen, David Morrissey, Frank Kelly, Elizabeth Berrington, Paul Rhys, Dexter Fletcher, Glenna Morrison, Matt Blair
- source
-
Channel 4 Television, 124 Horseferry Road, SW1P 2TX London, U.K. EMAIL: lronchetti@channel4.co.uk
After years in office, Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, was overthrown as prime minister and replaced by the amiable and modest John Major. It seemed like the occasion for the Labour Party to regain power. Stephen Frears’s The Deal traces the careers of two young Labour politicians, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, as they jockey for position. Brown was senior and more experienced, but not quite as deft as Blair at spin and maneuver. And so the two men make a deal, a pact, whereby Blair will lead the party—and become prime minister—and then Gordon Brown will take up the succession. Years later, Blair has announced vague plans for his departure, and Brown is still waiting. The script by Peter Morgan, this year’s Kanbar Award winner, grew through detailed research as he pursued and talked to leading participants in British politics. The result is an uncanny facsimile of what was really said and done; it’s the British equivalent of Bob Woodward’s books, but a good deal more unnerving when Michael Sheen is so uncannily like Tony Blair (a role he reprised to great acclaim in The Queen, another Morgan/Frears collaboration). The Deal is Morgan’s breakthrough film, and its showing will accompany an onstage interview in which he discusses his career.
—David Thomson
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