American Dharma

Quite a good film and the cinematics make it more watchable than if it was just a standard interview type format. For such a vilified character he doesn't seem that bad and is at least open to debate. It's striking that much of Bannon's political ideology seems to come apart under the gentlest of questioning and he almost seems acutely aware of that. Can't help feeling as a result that there is something more going on and that his politics are perhaps more a surface manifestation of some deeper psychological aspect. The film leaves that aspect largely unexplored.

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.

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.

Errol Morris delivers it again. The principle is the same: a tet à tet. But the end result is always different. Always amazing out it develops. Dont let your political views stand in the way of watching this film. Just enjoy it. It's yet another powerfull movie. And a word to the music and sound effects, Morris knows how important they are adding drama.

I gave a 7 because it's always a good thing to have people like S Bannon on record, but overall I found the interview quite weak as Errol Morris is sometimes simply disagreeing or being outraged but does not bring any facts or arguments into the mix.

Interesting to see how Bannon had no credible defense argument for Charlottesville, the Alt-Right, and the role of Breitbart in giving a voice to hate. I think he just does not care of the consequences; the end justifies the means.

I found remarkable that the role of Bannon at Cambridge Analytica was not mentioned (except for a newspaper title that appears half a second on the screen).

Bannon is a man with a mission - an evil, dangerous mission that is. He does not care about the deplorables, the men in the trenches, they are just a tool.

Bannon is consumed by power, and will piggy back any useful idiot/populist that will help speed up the coming of a self-realizing apocalyptic prophecy.