Best of Enemies movie review & film summary (2015)

When we see Buckley and Vidal in the first debate, both seem self-conscious and slightly awkward, with forced smiles and graceless stabs at jocularity. No doubt the pressurized situation and their intense dislike of each other accounted for this initial discomfort, but the two media pros soon overcame it. Still, they were fundamentally ill-matched in the initial round: While Buckley had gone sailing prior to the convention, Vidal had hired a researcher and come away with a sheaf of Buckley quotes that he used to nail him. Buckley soon rectified his mistake. 

Speaking of the differences between then and now, it’s striking how remote from any current TV personalities they are. Both were products of plush upbringings and boarding schools, with patrician accents and mannerisms that scream privilege and hauteur. Yet despite the upper-crust images, they were not, as one observer notes, products of the old Eastern establishment, but conquerors of it: outsiders who found their way in.

Public intellectuals of a sort almost unknown today—which is to say, real intellectuals totally accustomed to the media glare—both men were extremely prolific authors who also ventured into the arena of politics. Vidal ran for Congress in 1960 with the support of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy (Jackie Kennedy was related to the author by marriage); on losing the race, he bitterly left the U.S. for Italy. For Buckley, losing his race for New York City mayor to liberal John V. Lindsay in 1965 was not a total defeat; it helped him sharpen the ideas that would guide right-wing politicos in years to come.

In a sense, the two debaters we see sparring in 1968 are prophets in the making. Buckley’s ideas, perhaps more than any other thinker’s, undergirded the conservative movement that gathered momentum during the next decade and resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. And Buckley’s own brother, Reid Buckley, actually uses the word “prophesy” in crediting Vidal for warning about the dangers of America turning into an overextended empire like ancient Rome.

Indeed, the racial turmoil of 1968, the arguments over economic inequality (Vidal called the GOP the “party of greed” while quoting statistics showing far less disparity than is the case now), the draining foreign entanglements, the “culture wars” over values and morality, together with Buckley’s and Vidal’s provocatively contrasting views of all such subjects – it all make the debates we hear feel very much connected to the present day.

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