Brit documentary paints scary Sarah Palin portrait

A lively, no-holds-barred British documentary about former Alaska governor and wannabe US President Sarah Palin made its debut before the world press at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival on Friday evening.

In Sarah Palin – You Betcha!, celebrated documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield paints a scary portrait of a woman whose political knowledge of the world is zilch, who thinks nothing of articulating terribly regressive social positions and is personally extremely vengeful and invariably turns on her friends and aides when it suits her. Not a nice woman to know, let alone to vote for.

The style of the film is pure Broomfield. Armed with a boom microphone and the thick skin of a natural born provocateur, he rides into the forbidding Alaska winter to talk to Palin’s parents, friends, Republican colleagues, campaign managers, opponents and sundry others to present a portrait of a woman who might run for presidency in 2012 if the US does not wake up in time to be able see the enormous damage that she can do to our world.

Broomfield’s previous documentaries include Tracking Down Maggie (On Margaret Thatcher) and Hollywood Madam (on Heidi Fleiss).

The picture that emerges in Sarah Palin – You Betcha! certainly isn’t pretty. Broomfield drives up and down Palin’s hometown, Wassila, and several places around it to understand who the ex-GOP vice-presidential candidate really is. Poor syntax is the least of her crimes.

Not only does the documentarian’s repeated plea for an interview with the subject of the film herself fall on deaf ears – as she is wont, Palin is, however, charm personified when Broomfield barges into a couple of book signing events and wonders aloud whether she would ever talk to her on camera.

She doesn’t. Neither do several others. The fear of reprisals stalks many of her townsfolk. The only former classmate of Palin’s who agrees to talk candidly about her now lives in Alexandria, Egypt, and Broomfield tracks her down.

Wasilla is dominated by a fiercely evangelical community that believes that gays are evil and that the end of the world is nigh and the stage is set for the return of Jesus Christ.

Broomfield’s final appeal, articulated through the voices of many who have known Palin and have been grievously burnt by the experience, is unambiguously cautionary. Sarah Palin is seriously bad news for the sane world. You betcha!