AMERICAN DHARMA DOCS D: Errol Morris. U.S./UK. 100 min. Sep 15, 9:45 pm, Scotiabank 2. See listing. Rating: NNN
After interviewing Robert McNamara in The Fog Of War and Donald Rumsfeld in The Unknown Known, Morris focuses on Steve Bannon, the self-styled visionary who steered Donald Trump to victory in the 2016 Presidential election.
The result is pretty much what anyone who’s ever seen Bannon speak would expect, as the former Breitbart editor rolls over his interlocutor, espousing his ideology of unseating “elites” in order to stop a working-class revolution while avoiding any responsibility for the waves of racism and intolerance he’s tacitly encouraged through his right-wing, America First populism.
American Dharma won’t end Bannon, or even hobble him as he does with almost everything, he’ll just create his own interpretation of it and insist that he’s right, refusing all contradictory evidence. Morris does a fine job of capturing that behaviour over and over again, revealing his subject as a nihilist who insists he’s a liberator.
What’s worse, the guy doesn’t understand The Searchers.
