Death of a Nation is another one of D'Souza's movies that is so poorly made that it has no chance of persuading anyone who isn't feverishly in love with his opinions. I don't like writing about politics on imdb, that's not what this platform is for, but to me this movie is just so poorly made that I don't even need to talk about why his points are bad and wrong. That comes down to two issues.
1. The ridiculous over-emotional production. Now, I get that this is really important to Dinesh, but this movie does not need to be extreme as it is. Constantly music is blaring in every scene to indicate the emotion you are meant to feel. The evil lefties come on, the imperial march starts playing as we fear the end of everything. Then Trump comes on, and we get uplifting country sounds to remind us that Trumps is A GOSHDARN 'MERICAN. I don't mind using music but when you really want us to feel something in a documentary, that's when you turn the music off and just show us raw interviews, footage etc. We see Dinesh exploring the city, desperate to discover the truth. Just watching the movie you get a clear sense of narcissism, as Dinesh not only talks about himself in great detail but in lots of self congratulation. But the real highlight is the Nazi subplot. Someone thought to put in third rate Hitler to make this seem more connected. It only ties up to the ridiculous "National SOCIALISM is actually left-wing" argument that I swear he's made in another movie, but otherwise just brings a lot of unintentional entertainment value. Like seriously they get the most lazy hitler ever.
2. Actually convincing anybody. If you aren't completely on his side, you won't be persuaded by this. To me it's not just a matter of disagreement. D'Souza doesn't give a real argument as to why "Dems bad" and "Trump good". He likes Trump because he wont support the terrible democrats, but it's never explicitly clear why the democrats are so bad. He basically says they supported fascism and racism etc but never explains why they still do (which he kinda implies). He implies that the left wants socialism. I understand to a lot of people hear that word and throw up, but even then those people are never given any reason to believe that because D'Souza never really explains how they are socialist. Part of the problem is that he only debates right wing people so that he can't really argue the positions. Even if he just did out of clips and what people say, he is so ridiculously inconsistent with his depictions. For most of the movie, he likes to call dems the REAL fascists. But then occassionally he just takes time to show clips of lefties to insult them. Considering he never makes a distinction between liberals and lefties it just comes across as though he doesn't really have a good argument, he's just insulting the people he disagrees with.
Here's the thing - if I was Dinesh I'd do a bunch differently that would make it much better:
1. Interview democrat politicians and horribly edit them out of context.
2. Swap the Hitler scenario with a Stalin one, that way more people are convinced
3. Address the sex scandals by saying "But democrats had Bill Clinton"
4. Actually make arguments as to why the Dems are still racist
5. Not put music over all my scenes
6. Talk to Trump to make people like him more.
How hard is that?
But if he did that, then I wouldn't have something to convince conservatives not to be conservative. So thanks Dinesh!
