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behind every dumb, dangerous and a pig of a man there's a very smart beautiful woman....

 

Presumably, Melania is meant to show us the woman behind the woman behind the man. It’s a lavish, beautifully shot documentary that deploys many of the tropes of commercial cinema (director Brett Ratner’s principle stomping ground until accusations of sexual assault – which he has denied – derailed his career in 2017). But actual revelations and insights into the first lady of the United States (FLOTUS, for short) are as thin on the ground as the hairs are on her husband’s head.

Melania Trump was a model before she became the girlfriend of property developer Donald Trump circa 1998. Born in Slovenia, she grew up watching her seamstress mother devote herself to the business of making things beautiful.

“My mother’s fashion talent and expertise cultivated my deep appreciation for great design,” she says in the voice-over narration that guides us through the 20 days leading up to her husband’s inauguration (his second) as president in January 2025. “From her wisdom, I grew to honour the craft, treasure the artistry, and respect the level of perfection required to create timeless pieces.”

Melania’s dedication to the finely honed surface of things is evident in every frame of this film, which she produced. It opens, after a sweeping drone shot across the ocean and onto the Trumps’ Florida palace, Mar-a-Lago, with a fitting for the outfit she will wear on January 20.

Soon after, we’re invited to marvel at the embossed A4 invitation and the gold-accented tableware for the candlelight dinner, thrown to honour “the elegance and sophistication of our donors … the driving force behind the campaign and its philosophy, the reason our victory is possible”.

Later, at said dinner, we see some of the guests: Elon Musk is among them. So too is Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon.

Bezos’ company paid $US40 million ($57 million) to acquire the rights to this film, of which $US28 million went straight to its subject. It is reportedly spending another $US35 million to market it.

That’s about 106 million in Aussie dollars, an extraordinary amount for what one might charitably term a vanity project, and uncharitably term softball propaganda for an administration that is edging ever closer to fascism by the day. But for influence and a slice of the space business (in which Bezos and Musk are fierce rivals), it’s probably a cut-price deal.

Melania talks a lot about the importance of family – and of her son, Barron, especially. She talks about her good works, which focus mostly on child welfare (her Be Best campaign targeted cyberbullying; her Fostering the Future program aims, among other things, to get foster children into tertiary education). And she espouses values that are hard to argue with, framing them through the prism of an immigrant who has made good.

“Everyone should do what they can to protect our individual rights,” she says near the film’s end. “Never take them for granted because in the end, no matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity.”

Precisely how she tallies that with the version of America her husband is busy creating is anyone’s guess, because other than those motherhood statements, what she thinks or feels is largely off limits.

She is, though, thoroughly committed to playing the role of dutiful and beautiful wife, paraded endlessly beside a smug and smirking Trump, holding his hand, dancing robotically at ball after ball. The insights into the pomp and ceremony of the inauguration are genuinely interesting, though. And the scene in which Melania breaks into a disco jig as YMCA comes on is a refreshing and rare moment of (seemingly) unscripted levity.

“There is much to accomplish in the next four years,” she says at the film’s end. Promising to “serve the American people once again”, she vows “I will move forward with purpose, and of course, with style”.

It’s hard to argue on the second point. Melaniais all about those perfect teeth, that great hair, that catwalk-friendly silhouette. But it’s impossible not to feel that the real purpose of this portrait is not insight, but rather distraction from the awfulness and corruption of her husband’s regime.

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/lavish-documentary-on-us-first-lady-beautifully-shot-but-short-on-substance-20260130-p5nyay.html

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

nothingness....

 

By 

Scowling Void of Pure Nothingness’: Critics Destroy $75 Million Melania Trump Documentary
“It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality,” said one critic.

 

Critics have weighed in on Amazon MGM Studios’ documentary about first lady Melania Trump, and their verdicts are overwhelmingly negative.

According to review aggregation website Metacritic, Melania—which Amazon paid $40 million to acquire and $35 million to market—so far has received a collective score of just 6 out of 100 from critics, which indicates “overwhelming dislike.”

Similarly, Melania scores a mere 6% on Rotten Tomatoes’ “Tomameter,” indicating that 94% of reviews for the movie so far have been negative.

One particularly brutal review came from Nick Hilton, film critic for the Independent, who said that the first lady came off in the film as “a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness” who leads a “vulgar, gilded lifestyle.”

Hilton added that the film is so terrible that it fails even at being effective propaganda and is likely to be remembered as “a striking artifact... of a time when Americans willingly subordinated themselves to a political and economic oligopoly.”

The Guardian’s Xan Brooks delivered a similarly scathing assessment, declaring the film “dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing.”

“It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality,” Brooks elaborated. “I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.”

Donald Clarke of the Irish Times also discussed the film’s failure as a piece of propaganda, and he compared it unfavorably to the work of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. 

“Melania... appears keener on inducing narcolepsy in its viewers than energizing them into massed marching,” he wrote. “Triumph of the Dull, perhaps.”

Variety’s Owen Gleiberman argued that the Melania documentary is utterly devoid of anything approaching dramatic stakes, which results in the film suffering from “staggering inertia.”

“Mostly it’s inert,” Gleiberman wrote of the film. “It feels like it’s been stitched together out of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show. There’s no drama to it. It should have been called ‘Day of the Living Tradwife.’”

Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter found that the movie mostly exposes Melania Trump is an empty vessel without a single original thought or insight, instead deploying “an endless number of inspirational phrases seemingly cribbed from self-help books.”

Kevin Fallon of the Daily Beast described Melania as “an unbelievable abomination of filmmaking” that reaches “a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review.”

“It’s so expected,” Fallon added, “and utterly pointless.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/melania-trump-movie-reviews

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.