And when I say this, it's not just a euphemism for "finally making something not sucky." I mean it in a very literal sense--i.e., that Sorkin has returned to the entertaining form he used to exhibit in the days of Sports Night and early West Wing and has abandoned the heavy-handed didacticism that has plagued him for years.
Let me explain.
From A Few Good Men until the first two seasons of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin was on an unbelievable hot streak that yielded him quite a bit of success. Each film and television project he tackled was entertaining and, with the exception of Sports Night, quite successful. Sorkin has never been a perfect writer, and his faults at the time were evident--his movies were too talky and stagebound, his characters often talked alike and acted alike, etc. This has all been said many, many times. Nevertheless, with Men and The American President, he created two successful genre efforts that were truly entertaining, funny, and touching. This is no small achievement. His television efforts were similar in tone and thrust. Sorkin, perhaps more so than most writers, has a real interest in the corridors of power and in powerful people, but this had largely manifested itself in telling good stories in heady settings with powerful people. Sure, there was plenty of speechifying about The Right Thing To Do. It didn't get in the way of the rest of the stuff.
Now, there is one exception to this rule that I haven't discussed, and that is Sorkin's first film, Malice. A terrible film, but one whose terribleness manifested itself in interesting ways. If anyone has ever wondered what would happen if Sorkin tried his hand at noir, this is the movie you want to watch. As Roger Ebert notably remarked, it's the only movie ever made that throws in a plot about a serial killer just for atmosphere. Characters are either completely good or utterly evil, contrivance is piled upon contrivance, plot twists that just make you sit back and say, "What the fuck?" It's not unlike the recent Mr. Brooks, from what I hear. With Malice, it was evident that Sorkin Had Something To Say, and wanted to paint a morality play that had A Message about Right And Wrong. And it was awful.
Malice was bad, but it is bad in a way that sorta stays with you. With me, anyway. And with the later seasons of West Wing under his care and the really awful Studio 60 after that, I couldn't help but be reminded of that movie. During the 1990s, Aaron Sorkin seemed content to provide great entertainment, gently tinged with his liberalism. Then he suddenly morphed into a humorless and self-important dramatist who suddenly had things he Had To Say About Life And Everything. And it destroyed him. The inflection point, as it were, was between the second and third seasons of West Wing, and there were several important events that happened between June and September of 2001. One might point to Sorkin's high-profile arrest for drug possession, or his divorce, but maybe we should listen to our Inner Giuliani and just say "9/11!" The World Trade Center attacks were a traumatic event for everyone, but judging from his work before the attacks and his work afterward, one can see certain traits. We have discussed his work before the attacks--afterward his work took on a far more political and overtly moralistic. He started examining societal and political problems in greater depth on West Wing, which seemed to fit the show but really ruined its quality as the show became far more dour and heartless. Then he did the same exact thing on his next show, Studio 60. One can almost admire the farcical extent of 60's overreach--it's a show that was just full of shit from start to finish. Serious plotlines involving family members recruiting mercenaries to save family members abducted in Afghanistan were thrown in alongside casual plots centering on snakes in the studio, which stood next to incredibly tedious multi-episode arcs about dinner parties. As one can imagine, the series was a total mess in terms of tone and message--it often felt as though Sorkin was trying to mention every single issue in America on every single episode--but despite these inconsistencies it was consistently unfunny. Oh, and it was preachy and patronizing throughout. At least West Wing could get away with these sorts of sins because of the gravitas of the corridors of power in which it was set. Studio 60 often functioned as a deconstruction of Aaron Sorkin, his missionary impulses and self-regard laid bare. Even the central conceit of the series didn't work--the meta-show was supposed to be an intelligent, bold onslaught on the status quo, with sketches that would really shake up the debate, you know, like "Pimp My Trike!" That tells you all you need to know about the show.
Charlie Wilson's War, on the other hand, felt much more like Sorkin's pre-9/11 work. It was educational but still entertaining, often serious but never Serious. It maintained a consistent tone throughout--we saw the buildup to Charlie's merry little war, thrown together without anyone's knowledge and without much knowledge of how to do it--and it actually manged to be funny. A bit lacking in subtlety, especially around the endgame, when talking about the import of the whole saga, but I thought that it's worth making a movie to note that even a hard-partying buffoon can change the whole course of history, for good and bad. All in all, though, it wasn't a bad film. It is encouraging that Sorkin seems to be emerging from his post-9/11 mindset. In the wake of a slate of really shitty post-9/11 films from Lions to Lambs to Redacted, the world has had enough Hollywood hand-wringing about the War on Terror. But someone who can make a point with humor, tell a good tale that tells us a little something about our history--we can always use someone like that.
