American Dharma

Seen at idfa 2018. The description on the idfa site got me really curious into this movie. However in my opinion the film did not deliver the promise of being "an horror story about a fascinating villan, too dangerous to ignore". However that may be actually true, this film did not leave that decision up to the viewer. And though it was beautifully crafted, it was overdone. To me the film felt artificial and thus had not the impact it could have.

As somebody who read the news during the Trump administration, nothing here surprised me, unfortunately. Apart from Morris' occasional polite interjections that Bannon seemed incoherent or self-contradictory, there were few breaks in the progress of Bannon's grandiose self-identifications with film characters played by Gregory Peck and John Wayne. These slow-moving bloviations, made unsuitably elegant by Morris' editing and use of famous film clips, take up much of the film. Morris does say, a few times, that Bannon's use of terms like "populism" and professed sympathy with "working people" make no good sense, considered alongside his endorsements of an unregulated marketplace, the absolute liberty of corporations to profit and pollute, and no clear vision of how breaking the American rule of law at the highest levels (to embolden an autocrat, in this case a delusional, brat-like one) helps "working people." In Bannon, we have an unusually complete personification of a desire to break American democracy, as if one were smashing a clock with a hammer in order to fix it. Bannon fuses a wounded egotism and a mythic nationalism, a reaction fired by a seething assumption that some apocalyptic, world-scale disaster could restore this small, individual blow-hard's lost dignity. The biggest defect of the film is that Morris didn't use his talent to imply or illustrate the perceived losses that motivate Bannon. Bannon obviously functions by mapping a personal or familial trauma onto a knight-vs.-dragon romance featuring "globalism" as the dragon (no explanation of any loss or disappointment of Bannon's is provided, but such a loss is a tacit theme of the whole). Morris could have done much more than assemble a film that remains a dramatic stage (featuring the set of a WWII airplane hangar that goes up in flames) for Bannon's ramblings, but to *analyze* a key psychopathy in current history. Because America, based largely on the luck of our geographical isolation from the full reach of other belligerents, came out of the disaster of World War II with three decades of prosperity, he maniacally dreams of a WWIII rather than having a coherent plan for making anything. None of Bannon's notorious scams come to light in the film; Morris overlooks the bizarre irony that Bannon earned considerable seed money for his current career by dealing (out of Hong Kong) illegal (according to the games' developers) video game accessories and cheats in the 2000s. His vague fantasies of remaking America by burning it down not only appeal to many wounded egos but create a thick smokescreen against realities--like his (and Trump's) scams. The machine that is broken seems to be Bannon, not America, but Morris failed to put together a vivid analysis of why Bannon doesn't run right, but merely puzzled at the spectacle of the bound, grinding gears. The stakes are higher than the film implied. That thing could blow up.

In Morris' previous film, you hear him ask questions but never really see him. In "American Dharma", he's right there, in Bannon's face... and on camera. It's personal. This was personal for Morris, "I'm afraid of you guys." I love that decision.

As for the film itself, it was a brilliant psychological analysis of someone (and something) that not many people are willing to properly analyze. A recognition of a sentiment within America that lusts for revolution. Why revolution? Well, Bannon has his say. And Morris has his. But that's the easy stuff. The stuff on the surface.

Where this film really gets interesting is Morris' juxtaposition of Bannon's favorite films and Bannon himself. These stoic, heroic, "All-American" figures like John Wayne or Alec Guiness in "Bridge Over The River Kuai" that do things based on their "dharma"... purpose, honor, duty. This is all well and good until Morris points out, "But, wait, all these character eventually breakdown emotionally with an epiphany of 'My God, what if I'm wrong?'" And, in a way, Bannon reaches that point by the end of Morris' film. Everything around him burns to the ground and he's left walking, alone, into a dark and dreary horizon.

All around, a complicated and beautifully executed documentary that forces the viewer to look at things that make them uncomfortable. In other words, exactly what a documentary should be.

An exquisitely made documentary, in which Errol Morris gives Steve Bannon just enough rope to hang himself. No doubt many would prefer to see Bannon more thoroughly and decisively skewered (which wouldn't be hard), but Bannon is smart enough not to participate with any documentarian who would do that. Instead, Bannon engages with Morris and collaborates all-too-willingly with his conceit of drawing parallels between Bannon's political machinations and his favourite Hollywood classics. The approach neatly underscores Bannon's essential narcissism, while giving him a framework within which he can both expound his political views and reveal himself, both proudly and inadvertently. As the consequences of this current wave of populism - and, more specifically, Trumpism - continue to unfold and blight the world, American Dharma is likely to become an increasingly important document of one of the movement's most important architects. With Trump now defeated (at least electorally) Morris probably needs to re-visit Bannon for his more unvarnished views on the presidency he engineered. Maybe they could call it Dharma and Dumber.

Errol Morris is a weasel. He was face to face with Bannon for 17 hours, but waits until AFTER he gets bad reviews to badmouth him.

The movie centers around Bannon's favorite movies, including "Sergeant York" and others, and how they revolve around the Trump 2016 Campaign, but also how he got started, and why he thinks the way he does... Definitely worth the $3.99, and I'm cheap!