The most interesting thing about “Weiner,” a new documentary about former New York congressman Anthony Weiner that opens on May 20 at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza in New York, is on the film’s sidelines. Huma Abedin, the disgraced politician’s wife and a longtime aide to presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, is reserved where her husband is boisterous, realistic where he is delusional. She’s not the center of attention, but her presence is felt each time she appears on screen, usually rolling her eyes or issuing a sharp comment that cuts into Weiner’s nonsense like a knife. In many ways, she acts as a surrogate for the audience.There is an argument to be made that Abedin should be the subject of this film, and that the position “Weiner” wants to take as a fly-on-the-wall observer of the politician during the 2013 mayoral race is misguided. Weiner appears to be wrestling with control over his own narrative, and the film is, at least at first, in service to his own view of himself as a scrappy fighter, back in the big ring one more time — a comeback story. The film opens with something like a greatest hits montage of Weiner in Congress, where he became semi-famous for causing a scene. When we find him, the sexting scandal that forced the politician to resign from Congress in 2011 is behind him, and his family has managed to stay together. The camera is supposed to be witnessing history in the making, the process of putting the pieces back together.But then everything shifts. Partway through the mayoral race, the sexting scandal reemerges, with new evidence and even more salacious details (his online nom de plume, Carlos Danger, was a particular target). Weiner is back to square one, a walking punch line who can’t get even get his talking points across without his personal life dominating the conversation. Every appearance, even a stroll down the street, becomes a way for people to pass moral judgment. The people in New York City want him to disappear.But he refuses. The film, at this point, hangs back and watches as Weiner and his team drag themselves through the mud. The staff members around him just want to make it out the other end of the race with some semblance of dignity. But what Weiner ultimately wants is unclear. He gets punchier with hecklers and goes blow-for-blow with television hosts. The film attempts to take the chaotic situation it now finds itself in, much different than where it began, and string together a critique of the media’s fixation with scandal.This isn’t necessarily an invalid point. How Weiner’s online dalliances with other women, and how he and his wife deal with that privately, have little bearing on how he would be able to run the city. But it’s simply not the most interesting path the film could have followed. With the access they are given — which appears to be a lot, although there are clearly things that are off limits — the filmmakers want to engage with the scandal as it’s happening around them while at the same time wagging their finger at it, without any thought as to how the film they are making is part of the problem they are diagnosing. As for their subject, scant attention is paid to how he is implicated in what they are condemning.“Weiner” wants to be a sympathetic portrait of a man caught in the machinery of gossip and scandal. Here is a person who has admitted to mistakes but will never be able to live them down because of the position he’s in. But as the credits roll, the film unwittingly reveals what it doesn’t seem to understand. We see more recent clips of Weiner post-mayoral race, arguing with television hosts and making jokes about his personal life. He is now a pundit, the same as those who once made fun of him. In a way, it’s always what he wanted to be: an entertainer. Politics was just the vehicle he used to get in front of a camera. And the audience, much like their surrogate on screen, rolls their eyes.
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