Barney Frank, the former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, is a hero to many – including me. Not only did he come out of the closet in the 80s, one of the first congressmen to do so, but he was a staunch and powerful voice for liberalism in America. As anyone who ever caught him on CNN, MSNBC, Real Time with Bill Maher or even Fox News, where he was a constant presence, knows, Frank was a colorful character. Irascible and unkempt, Frank has, as Rachel Maddow put it upon his retirement in 2013, “a sense of humour he wields like a wrecking ball”.
Considering his outsize personality and his considerable legislative accomplishments during a 40-year career, you would think that Frank would be an excellent subject for a documentary – and you’d be right. However the new film Compared to What? The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank, which debuts on Showtime on Friday at 9pm, is not that documentary.
Directed by Sheila Canavan and Michael Chandler, Compared to What gets the facts right and lays them out interestingly: Frank’s early years at Harvard, his role in the Massachusetts state legislature, his election to Congress, his rabid defence of President Bill Clinton during his impeachment scandal, and finally his orchestration of the Dodd-Frank banking reform legislation. It even manages to get some of the broad character strokes, such as his loneliness both before and after coming out of the closet, his inability to suffer fools and his argumentativeness.
What it fails to convey is that spark that drives the best and most insightful documentaries. Frank is never seen really pondering or grappling with an understanding of his past from the present perspective. He’s not unguarded enough, at least on film, to betray some insight into what motivated him all those years.
Though it mentions some unflattering character traits and does have one segment where screenwriter and gay civil rights activist Dustin Lance Black criticises Frank’s conservatively pragmatic approach to passing legislation impacting the LGBT community, there isn’t much conflict or contradiction at play here. The film-makers have decided that the script was that Frank wanted to help people, that he put his private life on hold because of the closet, and that he devoted himself to working in the House of Representatives because that is what he loved. That is the story, and they’re sticking to it.
Seeing more opinions from people like Black or even conservative commentators like Bill O’Reilly, with whom Frank is seen arguing in archival footage, might have proven a more well-rounded view of how he was perceived in the world at large. The film-makers dispute the common charge that he is part of the reason for the 2008 financial crisis, but there is a way to explore that part of his legacy that would be good for the film without necessarily endorsing that (erroneous) belief.
Compared to What also acknowledges but quickly elides a scandal from early in his career where Frank had a relationship with a man he hired, first for sex and later as his driver, who ran a prostitution ring from Frank’s apartment. The film woudn’t have had to become sensationalistic, but finding some sources of conflict, either internal or external, that went beyond the usual Republican-Democrat sparring would have saved it from some longuers.
The best moment of the movie comes near the end when Frank weds Jim Ready in 2012. After they are pronounced married, Frank pulls Ready close, says something inaudible and his eyes well up. They embrace for quite some time and it is an incredibly moving and quiet expression of something that Frank has fought for, both personally and in Congress, for decades. It is the culmination of his life’s work.
More moments like this would make the film riveting. As an instrument to build Frank’s legacy, it’s more than serviceable, but as something that gives a penetrating insight into the inner workings of a congressman, it sadly falls short.
