{"id":1286,"date":"2026-06-05T21:09:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:09:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:09:22","slug":"mario-review-straightforward-doc-tells-mario-cuomos-story-in-prose-rather-than-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=1286","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Mario\u2019 Review: Straightforward Doc Tells Mario Cuomo\u2019s Story in Prose Rather Than Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<svg><\/svg> <span>Logo text<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n\tWhen Mario Cuomo is discussed today, it\u2019s most frequently in the context of how disappointing his son Andrew has become (and Chris, too, if you happen to work in the media), or his universally relevant observation that politicians \u201ccampaign in poetry and govern in prose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=1284\">Jennifer Lopez Going Viral for Hot Take That \u201cYou Have to Be Born in New York to Be a New Yorker\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s one of those maxims so indelible it\u2019s hard to imagine that it emanated from any single person, and it hovers over every moment of Peter Kunhardt, George Kunhardt and Teddy Kunhardt\u2019s new documentary, <em>Mario<\/em>, whether it\u2019s being discussed or not.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tMario\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<div>\n<span>The Bottom Line<\/span><br \/>\n<span><\/p>\n<p>\tDry but persuasive.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<strong>Venue: <\/strong>Tribeca Festival (Spotlight Documentary)<br \/><strong>Directors: <\/strong>Peter Kunhardt, George Kunhardt and Teddy Kunhardt<br \/>\n<span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 27 minutes\t\t\t<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n\tPremiering at Tribeca, <em>Mario<\/em> is an interesting documentary, both hagiographic and pragmatic. It\u2019s a documentary dedicated to yearning for what now seems like a fantasy politician, and a character study of an actual man whose difficulties reconciling aspirations with reality frequently left him disappointed \u2014 and ultimately left his most passionate supporters disappointed, too, when he declined to attempt the ascension to the country\u2019s highest office in 1988.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s also a documentary conveyed entirely in prose, with nary a trace of poetry to be found; it\u2019s easy to feel that this 87-minute film errs on the side of dry biographical recitation.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tTold with the participation of all five Cuomo children \u2014 only Chris and Andrew\u2019s presences are distracting and irritating \u2014 as well as his longtime wife Matilda, <em>Mario<\/em> prides itself on tracing Cuomo\u2019s path as a man of his respective historical moments.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCuomo was born in the Great Depression and grew up at a time when it was possible to see the impact of FDR and the New Deal on the success of his own immigrant family, across the home of his youth in Queens, and across the country. He came of professional age in the unruly New York City of the 1970s, amid a burgeoning resentment directed at the abandonment of local government, and he came of age as a leader in the 1980s when his time as governor of New York put him in ideological opposition to Ronald Reagan in every way.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe documentary is invariably disappointing, or at least disappointed, using Cuomo\u2019s 1984 Democratic National Convention keynote address as its climax. The speech, whose writing and rewriting Andrew is able to effectively explain, remains an astonishing evocation of Democratic principles and ideals, the sort of galvanization the party has lacked outside of the tenure of Barack Obama, another politician thrust into the national spotlight with a convention keynote. As great as the speech is, the left\u2019s lack of clear successors to Cuomo, both in that ill-fated 1984 election and in 1988 when the party waited breathlessly for months only to have Cuomo opt not to run, is invariably deflating.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=1282\">Musicians\u2019 Union Sues Major Labels for Artists\u2019 Share of AI Song Generator Settlement Money<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt is, as writer Ken Auletta says multiple times, nevertheless illustrative of the importance of telling the stories of the people who didn\u2019t become president but may have been all the more interesting for not reaching a singular pinnacle.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe documentary doesn\u2019t wholly skimp on Cuomo\u2019s humanity, whether it\u2019s the story of the key advisor who died in the early stages of the AIDS epidemic or how competitive Cuomo was playing basketball with his kids. But these anecdotes are folded into the laundry list that is the rest of the film.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tDespite the presence of Cuomo\u2019s voluminous diaries, read with a lack of consistent framing by his children, the effort to find anything interesting to say about Cuomo the Man, rather than Cuomo the Public Figure, proves frustrating. We learn about Cuomo\u2019s devotion to Catholicism and how he found ways to make his religion a consistent piece of his progressive ideology at a time when the right was aggressively co-opting anything resembling faith. It\u2019s a valid observation, but it doesn\u2019t go any deeper.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWe get a few similarly superficial internal conflicts \u2014 the consensus builder with a streak of superiority, the politician who loved meeting people but hated campaigning \u2014 but more often than not, the documentary tells us about these traits directly instead of illustrating them. And when it does illustrate, the documentary leans on familiar period news footage, intercut with ultra-bland staged shots of an empty, book-filled office and fading on-screen text to animate sections from his diary.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s a Cuomo-ian contradiction that a documentary so lacking in emotion still generates a very visceral sense of what could have been. I was far too young to vote at the time, but perhaps because my parents had a colleague in academia who was a Mario Cuomo biographer, I vividly remember the sadness when Cuomo announced he wouldn\u2019t run for president.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWith those memories still present, <em>Mario<\/em> pushed me toward questions like \u201cHow did the Democratic Party lose the ability to articulate a message as frankly and inclusively as Mario Cuomo once did?\u201d or \u201cWhere are the Mario Cuomos of today?\u201d rather than hitting me hard on any artistic level. The thoughts linger, even if I remember no moment in the documentary generated by the craft of the filmmakers.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=1280\">Paramount Ordered to Release Board Communications on Skydance Megadeal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Kunhardt, George Kunhardt and Teddy Kunhardt&#8217;s documentary &#8216;Mario&#8217; shows us the Mario Cuomo who was and the politician who might have been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1138,1139,259,1037,260,1038],"class_list":["post-1286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-chris-cuomo","tag-mario-cuomo","tag-tribeca","tag-tribeca-2026","tag-tribeca-festival","tag-tribeca-film-festival"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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