Title: Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem
Cast: Katie Simpson, Dave Rider, Tom Beyer
Director: Shianne Brown
Rating: * * *
Runtime: 49m
Robert Ford shocked everyone with his unexpected win at the 2010 Toronto mayoral elections. This documentary is basically about the ‘trainwreck’ which he found himself in during that mayoral run, and the struggles he had to go through in order to confront the scandalous situations he found himself caught in. It could be taken as a cautionary tale for politicians of today or it could well be the playbook to ride out all political storms. The way you view it is what matters.
His tenure was chaotic with mounting scandals and drug allegations, and drew the attention of global media. Ford was initially seen as a very dedicated human being with personal struggles. But he had a brash persona, and this rubbed people the wrong way, especially legacy media, who were quick to nail him for being human with all the frailties that go with it.
Rob Ford was a deeply flawed human being, but his constituency adored him. He was able to avoid the nonsense until it became rather relentless and left him unglued. He is even compared to Trump.
He was caught on camera doing cocaine while still in office, but he refused to step down. Instead, he set about discrediting the media much before Trump did the same. This Netflix documentary resembles a thriller with many lows and some highs, as it basically revisits Rob Ford’s rise to the position of Toronto’s Mayor even as scandals come to the fore.
Rob Ford ensured his voters didn’t believe a word that came out in print (or on TV) against him. A lot of journalists were interviewed for this documentary, and they all recollect how Rob Ford managed to stay afloat despite his stormy political career and nasty controversies.
The documentary features close political aides, a bodyguard, and many others who worked with him and had first-hand knowledge of his deeds. In the end we are made to see a sincere, hard-working, ambitious and popular right winger who was intolerant towards criticism, refused to fit the mould – living his life as an alcohol/drug addict given to emotional outbursts. Of course, when his closest political aides say they did not see his dark side, one would have to take it with a pinch of salt. There’s really no way they could have missed that. Nevertheless, Ford’s populist approach and clear articulation of policies was far better than what Trump is doing today.
Policy decisions are not examined with any depth here. His declaration that transit workers are an emergency service, so they couldn’t strike, is mentioned in passing, and his voting against grant money for programs that treat AIDS is left unexplained.
Despite being caught red-handed, his popularity never really waned. It’s hard to imagine how people could be fooled again and again. Playing the victim card seems to have worked in his favour, as it has done for Trump and other right-wing politicians who use this playbook.
The documentary is not exactly a balanced portrait of Rob Ford. Everything about the mayoral tenure of Rob Ford is made interesting primarily because his career graph was similar to Trump`s. Both believed that the surest way to win over an electorate was to convince them that the media reports were faulty. There are some anecdotes that paint him as a regular good guy, but being caught on camera smoking crack with gun-runners was obviously not one of them. Ford eventually died in 2016 of an aggressive, rare form of cancer, but his success in keeping the media tethered to his apron strings never died with him, as is obvious today in Trump’s second run of the US Presidency.
