What the documentary ‘Weiner’ tells us about Huma Abedin
New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner listens as his wife, Huma Abedin, speaks during a news conference in New York on July 23, 2013. Explicit online correspondence with a young woman had recently come to light. (Kathy Willens/AP)
About 15 minutes into a newly released documentary about her husband’s train wreck of a campaign for New York City mayor, Huma Abedin reflects on the awkward improbability of it all.
“Those of you who know me are probably surprised to see me standing up here. I’m usually back of the room, far away from the microphone as possible,” she tells an audience of well-heeled women in a swanky Manhattan apartment where she has come to raise money for Anthony Weiner’s mayoral bid.
Abedin, of course, is the famously private aide de camp, confidante and surrogate daughter to Hillary Clinton. She is Clinton’s couture-clad palace guard.
It was astonishing for Abedin to have allowed such a film as “Weiner” to be made at all — much less to put a high-definition, close-up lens to the most humiliating chapter of her life.
The filmmakers go into the Weiners’ home, eavesdrop on their arguments, capture awkward moments of silence and exasperation. They open windows on a strained partnership that is being held together but appears a long way from healing.
Especially striking are the ways in which Abedin’s own marriage follows the patterns of her boss’s, raising many of the same questions. Was it love or ambition that made her stay with a self-destructive politician who betrayed her again and again? Is her torment a testament to her character, or evidence that something is lacking in her judgment?
“Weiner” premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, opened in the top 10 markets on May 27, and will spread to screens across the country in coming weeks. The ex-congressman has said he gave filmmakers Josh Kriegman, a former staffer, and Elyse Steinberg access in hopes that people might get a fuller picture of him. But at this point, the person everyone wants to see is his wife.
The timing of the film’s release is hardly ideal, coming at a moment when Clinton appears poised to become the first woman to win a major party’s presidential nomination. Abedin comes off as the oldest stereotype in politics: the suffering, ornamental spouse.
She has been interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with its probe into Clinton’s use of a private email account. Questions have also been raised about the fact that, during the last six months of Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, Abedin was drawing paychecks simultaneously from the government, a private consulting firm with close ties to the Clintons, the Clinton Foundation and the secretary’s personal office.
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