Perhaps it takes comedy to expose the absurdities of modern government.
If you believe the recently released British comedy, In the Loop, modern government has nothing to do with governing.
In the Loop is a feature length spinoff of the cult BBC TV series The Thick of It. The TV series follows the daily life of British MP and Minister for Social Affairs, Hugh Abbott, who spends most of his time ducking and weaving visits from the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker.
But In the Loop is more than just an entertaining film. In the Loop and The Thick of It are the rightful heirs to Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, delving into the nature of modern government and the absurdity of political decision making.
In the Loop follows the same basic theme of The Thick of It by providing a fly-on-the-wall account of the life of a British government minister and their staff but with different characters from the television series. The only cross over characters are Tucker and his equally brutish and harsh offsider, Jamie, both whose sole objective is to intimidate as many people to their will through the use of cutting verbal abuse, and, in the case of Jamie, unrestrained physical violence against property.
In the Loop is set inside the inner workings of the British bureaucracy and the United States Department of State and their bilateral relationship in the lead up to a US-UK led invasion of an unnamed Middle Eastern country.
British Cabinet Minister, Simon Foster, is sent to Washington to sit in on a series of high level meetings with US Department of State Assistant Secretaries after a series of gaffe-prone interviews with the press makes it politically safer from him to be offshore.
But instead of playing the high level diplomatic role he seeks Foster finds himself used as a "meat" by American bureaucrats and an Army General to both support and oppose their cause for invasion.
While anti-war activists might shallowly interpret the script as a critique of the bumbling bilateral relationship that led to the War in Iraq, the genius of the film is a commentary on contemporary government.
As the size of government has increased, power has shifted from ministers and their departments to the new class of ministerial advisers who make many day-to-day decisions.
In the Loop parodies this shift, treating Ministers as nothing more than cannon fodder for the media. Ministers limp along constantly in fear of being sacked for a bad decision that was made while they were unveiling a plaque on a school building in their constituency.
Malcolm Tucker, whose job it is to intimidate and control ministers at the behest of the prime minister, is a brilliant character whose lines seem to be built entirely around the rhythm of words beginning in "f" or "c".
But the success of the film comes from turning its camera on the American bureaucracy. In the Loop brilliantly depicts the politically savvy, ambitious, character-driven American bureaucracy; and differentiates it from its Westminster counterpart because of the political appointment of many of its senior Departmental officials. We see their staff grovel looking for an advantage to climb up the next rung of the ladder.
Considering the seemingly unending creative capacity of American television stations it is surprising that it has taken a British film to dissect the absurdity of the behind-the-scenes operations of the American government. A failed effort was already made to adapt The Thick of It for an American audience and hopefully this second effort succeeds.
And some of the most entertaining moments of the film come from when the two systems of government collide and the American senior bureaucrats and their underlings try to manipulate a British Minister and its government's unelected advisers, and vice versa.
But comedic brilliance is achieved when American Lieutenant General Miller and Assistant Secretary Linton Barwick independently seek to undermine and ridicule the authority of Tucker.
While the film only seeks to adapt a tried and tested formula used for television, In the Loop, is an intelligent parody and is hopefully only the first of many films that seek to entertainingly expose the folly of modern government.
Malcolm Tucker (played by Peter Capaldi) yells at Toby Wright
(played by Chris Addison) in the 2009 comedy, In The Loop
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