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“The Apprentice”, “Reagan” and “Civil War” all address the issues of the American election in November, whether directly or indirectly.
CULTURE – Hollywood, the last democratic bastion? Nothing is less certain. At a time of crucial choice for UNITED STATESAmerican fiction has, in its own way, taken up the issues of the election American presidential which opposes Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Before November 5, several films resonated with the upcoming election, beyond the case of The Apprenticea film tackling the figure of Donald Trump head-on. This is the case for a biopic about former president Ronald Reaganwhich has gone completely unnoticed in France in recent weeks, due to lack of a cinema release.
Obvious parallels
With this film aimed at American conservative audiences with two of the rare Hollywood actors openly pro-Trump (Jon Voight and Dennis Quaid), the echoes of the American presidential election are numerous, although unintentional, according to its director Sean McNamara. With unexpected success on the other side of the Atlantic, Reagan divides spectators and critics as rarely, divided between the praise of a biopic “inspiring” And “patriotic” and the denunciation of a shaky work which never dares to attack the image of a president who is as controversial as he is adored.
If this project was planned for a long time, its director easily admits the references to current events, despite a ” coincidence » with the news at the time of the theatrical release on August 30, 2024: “These things have happened suddenly over the past few months. Even me, when I watch the film, I say to myself “wow, that’s kind of what’s happening today”. I was shocked by the similarities.”
These “similarities” that Sean McNamara mentions, these are the assassination attempts against Donald Trumpof which Reagan was also a victim shortly after his election, but also the controversies overage of presidential candidate (Reagan had become the oldest American president, as Trump could become in the event of victory) or the inflationary economic context and the geopolitical issues which cross the world at the time of the elections of 1980 and 2024.
There are also references to current events in Civil War. Latest film from British writer and director Alex Garlandthe feature film released last April in France. It depicts the American democratic crisis through a civil war in a confusing context: an American president with Trumpist overtones faced, during his third term, Californian and Texan factions allied to secede against the authoritarian government.
Loss of bearings
Much sharper than Reaganthis ultra-realistic dystopia which never really takes sides exposes America’s ills through the journey of a team of journalists and war photographers in search of a final interview with the president before his announced fall.
Multiplying the sequences which would make the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 for an event “benign ”, as pointed out criticism of Varietythis feature film spares no one. Therefore attracting criticism for its lack of clear political positioning or for its almost contemplative posture when some expected a cathartic war film about the desire to shake up the order established by weapons. Like this famous sentence from Jesse Plemons, present in the trailer: “ What kind of American are you? »
However, the most blatant example this year in cinema undoubtedly remains The Apprentice. Although its director assured the HuffPost that his film is not about Trump or the presidential election, it is clear that this crude portrait of Trump’s rise in the 1970s and 1980s benefited from a distribution strategy linked to the American presidential election. And this despite the reluctance of the major Hollywood studios to distribute it.
More discreet, the film The Sweet Eastmodern variation ofAlice in Wonderland released at the beginning of the year, approaches America through the prism of the fairy tale and the teenage road trip to better illustrate the social, ideological and political divides in the United States. “ Wokism », omnipresence of firearms, white supremacism…: everything goes without any real bias.
Pervasive social themes
If it was released in 2020, An American Odee, was propelled to the top of US Netflix trends this summerfour years after its release, as pointed out Variety. It must be said that the film is adapted from the autobiographical best-seller written in 2016 by JD Vance, vice-presidential candidate who experienced an unexpected comeback when he was chosen by Donald Trump to be his running mate. Despite poor reviews, the film indirectly illustrates how the white American middle class gradually turned towards Donald Trump.
The presidential election also dabbled in the documentary genre, always linked to the themes of the campaign. This is the case of the recent Netflix film Zurawski v Texasrevealed the day when Kamala Harris campaigned in Texas on abortion rights. A theme at the center of this documentary on the fight of three women against the State of Texas, in 2023, after being refused abortions despite the health risks of their pregnancy.
Finally, it is difficult not to mention Girls Stategripping documentary from Apple TV+ about an immersive social experiment conducted in Missouri. The principle: having brought together 500 teenage girls by asking them the following question: “ What would American democracy look like in your hands? » Allowing this generation of high school students to imagine a new government, carry out an electoral campaign and form a Supreme Court to tackle the most sensitive social issues.
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