Hello to all my wonderful World Outside our Window subscribers,
It has long been said that when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the American flag and carrying a bible. In Melania, the latest from Rush Hour director and rabid sex pest Brett Ratner, one is forced to wonder if that quote gave us too much credit.
Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the famous Nazi propaganda film, goes out of its way to humanize and valorize Hitler — showing him in front of huge, seemingly never-ending crowds, framing him as a savior. Melania doesn’t even bother. Its subject is so obviously insincere and disdainful of her “supporters” that even an earnest Trump voter would struggle to find something to cheer for. This is barely a propaganda film, its only ideology ego and money, with no attempt to persuade or convince.
Ostensibly an intimate look at the First Lady in the 20 days leading up to the second inauguration of Donald Trump, Melania is a movie about walking across long, empty hallways into large, opulent rooms, before leaving those rooms and walking across different, even longer hallways. Opening with Melania driving from Mar-a-Lago to a private airfield, flying to NYC, and arriving at Trump Tower (all scored to “Gimme Shelter1,” giving the Rolling Stones yet another chance to sue the Trumps), she takes off and puts back on her sunglasses four times. The most scripted documentary I’ve ever seen, Melania follows a subject so clearly directing her own performance that Ratner’s only job seems to be keeping the camera in focus.
Beyond the designers and army of assistants that accompany Melania 24/7, there are no real “people” in this film. The second biggest character is the President himself, whose presence is predictably boisterous and overbearing. At one point, Melania’s interior designer gives an impassioned speech to the camera about her early life — an immigrant from Laos, she now works for the First Lady, true proof of the American Dream, at least in her eyes. Almost as if to ensure the audience notices Melania’s complete lack of inner thoughts, the camera stays on Mrs. Trump after this speech for almost a full minute, and she stands there, staring blankly with nothing to say.
Ratner’s attempts to insert personality into a woman famous for her lack of introspection fall flat at every turn. The one exception: a car scene where he and Melania sing along to “Billie Jean,” likely because Ratner’s contract stipulated he cram as many sex pests into the runtime as possible. Beyond learning her favorite song, the only other thing we discover about the famously quiet First Lady is that she used to be a model — which makes it easy for her posse of French designers to pick out an outfit. And though Ratner claims the film was Melania’s idea, the choice of director tells you everything: another sex-pest-solidarity pick from our Commander-in-Chief.
With a $75 million budget (most of which AmazonMGM paid directly to Melania Trump herself), Melania is, oddly, one of the most widely released and marketed theatrical documentary of the past 25 years. Unfortunately, it’s an insult not just to its audience but to filmmaking itself. At one point, the movie turns meta, showing Melania’s press assistants fielding calls about the documentary’s announcement, turning to the camera and promising they will never talk to a single journalist about how it came to be. There is no attempt to pretend this is anything other than a bribe, because no one involved cares what you think.
Amazon is fine if you know they greenlit a bribe — are you really going to cancel Prime? Melania doesn’t care how she comes across to the average American —has she ever spoken to one? Ratner knows anyone who Googles his name will find a disgraced hack — when being a cancelled sex pest gets you in the good graces of the President, why be anything else?
The movie will likely bomb. That might hurt the Trumps’ famously brittle feelings. But Melania already cashed her check. Bezos already got his White House access. Ratner, whose career was dead and should likely be in jail, got to premiere a new movie with the President of the United States.
Fascism, it turns out, didn’t need to hide behind the American flag. It just needed the largest checkbook.
Signing off,
Max Bolen
On my way to see the latest Sam Raimi, a much needed palate cleanser.
Ratner’s attempt to be a “real” director by using Scorsese songs includes a long take in hallway scored to “And Then He Kissed Me”