We’ve recently seen Mark Ruffalo as an investigative reporter in the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight, as part of a team which roots out wrongdoing – often passionate, often pounding on desks. He’s also part of an anti-wrongdoing team in the Avengers movies, playing Dr Bruce Banner and the Hulk. His new role is closer to the Spotlight model, but there is no shouting or roaring. Ruffalo has been recruited by US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to participate in the latest campaign video, ahead of the Wisconsin primary. (This is Ruffalo’s home state; he was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin – something he incidentally shares with Orson Welles.)
Ruffalo never appears on his own, as the star of the show; such a thing would contradict the collective, collaborationist ethic that the Sanders ad proposes for its grassroots revolution. He appears in a double act, in dialogue with the documentary film-maker Matthew Cooke, and they are – a little uncomfortably – talking both to each other and the camera. They smilingly and noddingly agree about the dangerous complacency and lassitude creeping into US political culture: cynicism, defeatism, low voter turnout.
“That’s exactly what the bad guys want. They want us to give up on the system!” says Ruffalo earnestly, smacking his fist into his palm.
Periodically, the pair’s conversation is interrupted by clips of Sanders addressing huge rallies or sternly addressing a TV interviewer about the iniquities of corporations such as ExxonMobil, denouncing them for suppressing evidence about climate change.
Sanders is a very different figure: an old guy – and angry. Ruffalo and Cooke are younger guys who have absorbed and transformed that anger into something more manageable for a liberal-minded audience who sure aren’t voting for Trump and are certainly in the Democrat camp, but may be wavering between Sanders and Clinton. The choreography and the mood music of the ad are such that Cooke and Ruffalo are there to mediate and interpret the message of Sanders.
There is a sizeable demographic who can’t help thinking of Larry David’s eerie impression of Sanders. The humorists and satirists need to be countered with idealism.
The message is familiar. Ruffalo is demanding nothing less than a grassroots revolution – it’s not just about electing Sanders for president. (The rhetoric comes close to implying that putting pressure on Clinton is actually the point of his campaign. But it will have no value or potency if at any point the possibility of actually electing Sanders is relinquished.)
Ruffalo concludes by saying it’s a group thing; everyone supports each other. “It’s decentralised; you don’t burn out!” he says, and there is some supportive arm-touching between him and Cooke. Then he declares the Sanders campaign is a “Re-Love-Lution!”
It’s a classic Ruffalo performance; he’s the engaged, supportive, cerebral good guy – a friend. (I’ve met Ruffalo at a party, and he’s like that with everyone; as easy and buddyish for the few minutes I met him as he is with Cooke in this video. Meet Ruffalo and you feel like you’re playing a (minor) friend of his in a movie. It is a political skill.)
It’s not a bad performance, and the discomfort of the semi-scripted conversation in a way contributes to the realness which is part of both Ruffalo’s public identity and Sanders’s. Whether it helps put Bernie in the White House remains to be seen.
