Ralph Nader is like the fabled elephant groped by blind men: They all know they have their hands around something, but no one can agree what it is.

Is the man a great American or a pious scold? The driving force behind consumer safety and citizen empowerment or the person who single-handedly delivered the country to George W. Bush in 2000?

This engrossing new documentary favors its subject without letting him off the hook. It's a biographical epic about a public servant who became more rigid as the country changed around him, and while directors Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan cautiously make the case that the consumer advocate-turned-political candidate still represents the best of America, it's impossible to shake the feeling that even pure-hearted zealotry has its dark, obsessive side.

What An Unreasonable Man does best is rehabilitate Nader's career before the election and remind us of an unparalleled public-interest legacy stretching over four decades - seat belts, airbags, tobacco warning labels, clean air and water bills.

Nader came to fame by taking on the automotive industry - Unsafe at Any Speed was published in 1965 - and General Motors' heavy-handed attempts to silence him included sending women to proposition him while he was grocery shopping. Nader sued for "overzealous surveillance" and won. The auto giant should have known you can't seduce a saint.

An Unreasonable Man spends a lot of time with Nader's Raiders, the army of young, clean-cut idealists he hired to take his consumer advocacy to every industry and all corners of America. We see them interviewed in youth, and we hear them today, heads nearly all bowed in sadness and anger at the tarnishing of their work by their boss's political ambitions.

The movie shows how Nader alienated himself from followers who went to work for Jimmy Carter in 1976, and it shows him both depressed and energized by the Reagan years, when many of his initiatives were violently dismantled.

And so to the 2000 election, in which Nader rode to battle saying the two parties were the same, a statement that was specious when he made it and is fatuous in retrospect. Yet he hit on truths as well, and he spoke to a progressive base that was sick of it all and still is.

An Unreasonable Man contorts itself to present rationales for why Nader didn't lose the election for Gore. These are awfully shaky - he did - but the fiasco's effect on muffling dissent has been more ruinous.

The "unreasonable man" himself is interviewed, too, and he comes across as patient, articulate and maddeningly uncompromising. Should a man this inflexible be allowed to run a country? Or is Ralph Nader best as our conscience, hectoring us from outside the city walls? To its credit, the movie leaves the matter with us.An interview with an 'Unreasonable Man'

As the 2008 presidential election draws closer, both parties will probably be keeping an eye on Ralph Nader. For now, Nader-watchers will have to settle for An Unreasonable Man, a documentary that reviews Nader's controversial career. Rocky film critic Robert Denerstein recently spoke with Nader.

1 Forget the movie for a minute. Will you run again?

It's still too early to say.

2 Do you have any sense of guilt about how your candidacy affected the 2000 presidential race?

No. I was a much more severe critic of Bush than Gore, especially in terms of his record in Texas. Also, we handed (Gore) issues he could have landslided Bush with: a living wage and medical care for everyone. . . . The Democrats weren't interested. They wanted to get us off the ballot, not take away our issues.

3 How do you react to your critics such as author Eric Alterman, who takes some hard shots at you in the movie?

I just bid on remaindered copies of Alterman's book (What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News). I gave 1,300 of them to the Medill School of Journalism (at Northwestern University). The associate dean loved it. . . . I haven't told Alterman or the editors of The Nation yet. (Alterman writes a column for The Nation.) I was almost tempted to send the 1,300 copies to him, but I thought they were better-used by students.

4 You say your only involvement with the movie was to give a seven-hour interview. What was your thinking about that?

Well, I have a practice. When I know there's going to be something written on what we do, who can better represent my viewpoint? Generally, I had an interest in seeing this thing aired in a documentary. We were getting so much political bigotry against our candidacy. There's the Supreme Court partisan decision, the shenanigans of Jeb Bush in Florida and on and on - and they're picking on the Greens.

5 I'm sure you know that Al Gore has a movie, too. Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth?

Yes. It was a very good movie. I also met him when he had a signing at a big bookstore in Washington. He doesn't have a grudge. He knows he didn't do the best campaign. He knows it was taken from him. . . . He ran an excessively cautious campaign.

6 Have you seen An Unreasonable Man?

I was one of the last to see it. (The movie premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.) The first time I saw it was about three months ago at a showing in suburban Maryland. It was a fair rendition. People who asked questions got a lot of them answered. It's no small feat to put 40 years into two hours and five minutes.

7 You don't strike me as a guy who spends much time at the movies.

I don't. I see maybe three or four a year. The last one was the Huey Long movie (All the King's Men). I liked it.

8 What do you see as our No. 1 problem today?

Lack of civic motivation and lack of imagination about what this country could be like. People get intimidated by legal jargon. They get scared or they're otherwise preoccupied. We don't have enough civic drive. If we did, Congress would be a different animal. We're millions of people and the corporations don't have any votes.

We have a lot of solutions on the shelf. Just look at energy. There are a lot of solutions. Community health centers work well. There are a lot of ways to make the tax system better, and we have the wealth. I always say, "Focus on Congress." That's the fastest way to turn the country around. You can do that with organized congressional watch groups. Would that we had as many Congress-watchers as bird-watchers. Anyway, you've got to keep plugging away.

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