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By Sam Macrory - 28th October 2010
In the entire 75-minutes of Hannah Rothschild's documentary, Mandelson: The Real PM? the lead role gives next to nothing away.
And yet the film, which screened at the British Film Institute on Wednesday, is compelling, unbelievable and at times hilarious.
And that's probably exactly how Mandelson intended it to be. It is impossible to believe that so skilled a political operator, one so completely in control of every word that leaves his mouth, did not act his way through the entire documentary. As with every aspect of his political career, the chance to be the star turn was just too good to resist.
Apparently the 200 hours of footage taken were whittled down, but we are left with little insight into Mandelson's life away from the ministerial car or the departmental offices. The business secretary is briefly caught changing his trousers, and we catch a fleeting moment of Mandelson relaxing at home in a loose-fitting dressing gown.
“I love him so much. He's a genuinely nice person, and genuinely New Labour', a nearly misty-eyed Mandelson muses on Tony Blair before stopping himself mid-flow and ending the interview. Beyond that, and the revelation that he spent one weekend evening of the election campaign watching Tom Ford's A Single Man, Mandelson's story shows a man who never stops working, nor performing for the cameras.
The film has echoes of two hugely successful BBC comedies: the mockumentary-style of The Office and the absurdities of The Thick of It. The close-ups and snatched glances of the former are everywhere, while the ply-board offices and latte-carrying minions of the latter are hard to distinguish from the real life spinners who appear in Mandelson's very real Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
One scene, following the business secretary's Tatler photoshoot, is pure Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the writers of The Office. Mandelon and his advisors discuss the government's multi-billion pound overspend on social care while the photographers clumsily drag their lighting equipment out of the room.
"We've now discovered a £3.8bn black hole in maintaining the current social care provision", Patrick Diamond, a former Downing Street advisor, quietly reveals. "Hmm, that's very unfortunate", is the remarkably understated reply from the business secretary. A Pret A Manger tub of grapes is passed across the table as Mandelson works out the sums. Meanwhile more photography gear is lugged by in the background. The camera then catches Diamond shooting a wonderfully worried glance to his grape-chewing colleague as Mandelson scribbles on a notepad. So government policy is formed.
The much-vaunted televised leaders' debates are also undermined as Rothschild captures a barbed yet playful interaction with George Osborne, the then shadow chancellor, "When are we going to see your film, Peter? June? July?", a smirking Osborne is unable to resist asking. Mandelson outdoes him with a reference to a past feud. “I might extend it, add some scenes in Corfu, perhaps.” Osborne's smile is less convincing.
Elsewhere the film is littered with wonderful moments, such as the scene in which Mandelson holds court while imperiously waving a finished yogurt pot for an assistant to carry to the bin. Then there is the fantastically delivered line when Mandelson denies that he has to deal with an angry prime minister. "He's just saying to me: hear my pain."
The image is a wonderful one, but when Rothschild films Mandelson in a phone conversation with Gordon Brown after the first televised leaders' debate, the extent to which one PM played emotional crutch to the other is painfully obvious. "Ignore the spin and the polls. The format works for you. You've got a long way to claw back with the public, and you started that process tonight," Mandelson tells a clearly confidence-starved prime minister.
The government may well have been in meltdown, and with it the New Labour project which Mandelson co-authored, but he gives every impression of loving the power and influence which his third political incarnation gave him.
"Would you rather be a mummy's boy or Prince of Darkness?" he is asked by the always off screen Rothschild after suggesting that the Conservative leader David Cameron is the former. "Oh Prince of Darkness, no question", Mandelson replies with no flicker of emotion.
Yet when he wells up at his farewell departmental drinks, or as he angrily shuts down the final post-election interview with Rothschild, it's clear that a human side lurks within this apparently never off duty politician.
It's a side which suggests that he is desperately sad that the most powerful chapter of his astonishing political career had closed, and that the lights are- surely briefly - being dimmed on one of the Wesmtinster's great box office performers. Rarely has a prince of darkness seemed so likable. Rothschild deserves considerable praise for this film, but the triumph is all Peter Mandelson's.
Sam Macrory is the Political Editor of The House Magazine.
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