MVFF38 Preview: ‘TRUTH,’ starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford

Based on the book “Truth and Duty: The Press, The President and the Power of Privilege” by Pulitzer and Emmy winning television producer Mary Mapes and detailing the explosive story of then President George W. Bush’s questionable history with the National Guard during the Vietnam War, Truth is a riveting piece of cinema with a powerhouse performance by two-time Academy Award® winner Cate Blanchett as Mapes. When reporting and fact-checking of the story comes back at her and legendary CBS anchor Dan Rather (played by Academy Award® winner Robert Redford) their livelihoods hang in the balance.

Writer-director James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) has a good ear for journalistic dialogue and ‘freedom of the press’ speeches but there are a few first-time directors traps he falls into. A few scenes of slow motion feel a bit amateurish and the (should have ben) subtextual father-daughter relationship between Rather and Mapes gets underlined unnecessarily. Those don’t take away too much from the impact of the story though as his adaptation of Mapes’s book is extraordinarily detailed and engrossing.

Truth, from Sony Pictures Classics, will be at the Mill Valley Film Festival Friday, October 16th and Sunday, October 18th and hit theaters in limited release on October 16th before going wide.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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