You've Been Trumped is a movie that, hopefully will go down in history as one of the great environmental documentaries, alongside Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. manages to not only be an upsetting, interesting, and engaging documentary, made by a first time film maker, but a brilliantly made film as well. Not to mention the fact that it is often laugh out loud funny and features a sound track to rival many Tarantino films.
The greatest accomplishment of You've Been Trumped, however, is that it is pretty much guaranteed to make you hate Donald Trump even more than you already do. It paints him as more than just a profiteering industrialist looking to make a quick buck at the expense of the environment. It also manages to include moments of his blatantly lying to reporters, as well as a subtle moment of him totally objectifying women for the sake of money. It should say something that this little documentary that has only been to a couple film festivals so far has provoked a huge reaction from Trump himself. He has made statements calling the film makers frauds and refusing to see the film because its "boring".
The basic story of You've Been Trumped is that Donald Trump set out to build "The World's Greatest Golf Course" and picked out as the location a Scottish beach. The thing is that this particular beach has sand dunes that are essentially the British equivalent of a National Monument. Despite this, he was given government approval to destroy the dunes. At this point, he thought he had won. The British and Scottish governments had given him carte blanche. The one thing he hadn't counted on was the resistance of a few local farmers, who's families had owned their land for generations, against the development. The film charts their fight to protect their land from essentially being bulldozed by Trump.
The film is brilliant not just for the way it charts the destruction that Trump does, both against the environment, and against the people, but because it is so well made. For one thing it looks gorgeous. Of course part of that comes naturally when you are shooting in some of the most gorgeous country on earth, but considering the budget and experience of those involved, its amazing how good You've Been Trumped looks. Even other than in the cinematography, the film is very well made. Even during the slower moments in terms of the plot, the film always feels interesting thanks to the great direction and editing.
You've Been Trumped is one of the best documentaries in years, and hopefully it will go on to win further recognition. It has only been to a few film festivals so far, but it has already won a few awards. It is emotionally potent, as well as being politically strong enough to inspire people to action. It is put together better than documentaries with twice the budget. Hopefully it will go on to have a great run and make enough of a splash to do some serious damage to Trump's Monopoly.
