Movie Review: The Brink

The Brink *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Alison Klayman 

 

The Brink is one of two documentaries made about Steve Bannon – the former head of Breitbart news, Trump campaign chairman, and White House Adviser for a while under Trump. The other film is Errol Morris’ American Dharma – which, like Morris’ film The Fog of War and The Unknown Known (among others) is made up of a very long interview between Morris and his subject. American Dharma still hasn’t been released (I saw it at TIFF last year) – which is a shame, because it is the better film. It allows Bannon to expose his Nationalist, Nativist, racist views, in the way that he does – wrapped up in language that tries to downplay the more incendiary aspects of the viewpoint, and the rhetoric that Breitbart or Trump uses. Morris pushes back, a little (not as much as he should have, according to some) – but visually undermines him a great deal. It allows Bannon enough space to say what he wants, but also makes it clear to those paying attention how full of shit he is.

 

The Brink takes a different tact. Director Alison Klayman followed Bannon for about a year – after he was ousted from the White House following Charlottesville, during the time when the book Fire & Fury and Bannon’s comments in it making Trump disavow him, and his ouster from Breitbart, and into the political wilderness. During the film, he spends most his time trying to organize behind Roy Moore for Alabama Senate (didn’t work) and to unite the right wing parties of Europe around the just passed European Union parliamentary elections (which happened after the movie ended – and while Bannon didn’t win, the right wing did better than expected).

 

For the most part, Klayman, like Morris, lets Bannon talk without challenging him too much. She is merely watching as he meets with people – and although she chimes in a few times, at good moments, she allows everyone enough room to make their opinions heard. But the meetings and interviews she does document tell you what her viewpoint is – she does keep in several interviews with journalists, who push Bannon on his views, on his use of dog whistles to anti-Semitism. She even allows Bannon himself to point out the contradiction in his rhetoric against elites, and his use of private planes and 5 star hotels when he travels. And she doesn’t let anyone off the hook – if you’re meeting with Bannon, she will let the audience know who you are. If you work with Bannon, and he badmouths you behind your back, that’s here as well.

 

All of this won’t be enough for some people. To some, giving Bannon any sort of platform, allowing him to expose his views to anyone, is too dangerous. Not because they themselves will be won over – but because some others will. I don’t buy that – I do think there is value in showing Bannon in this context – how he works behind the scenes, how he says one thing privately, and another publicly. How he spins the racism on display, and downplays it. And it also shows his effect on others – his Trump @ War film that he himself describes as propaganda, but his fans refer to as just facts, no propaganda. And viewed in conjunction with American Dharma is interesting – as together, they provide more context on Bannon than they do alone. I do hope that American Dharma comes out at some point – it’s a better film than The Brink. But The Brink is a very good film – and shows a different side. If you really want to stop people like Bannon, I do think you have to at least see how they operate.

Movie Review: Take Your Pills

Take Your Pills ** / *****

Directed by: Alison Klayman.

 

Alison Klayman’s Take Your Pills is an advocacy documentary that basically argues – not incorrectly – that as a society, we are over medicating our children – one drugs like Ritalin and Adderall, which is essentially speed. We get them hooked on the drugs, that help keep them alert and focused, with no real plan to ever get them off the drugs – and as a result, we have a society of children on the drugs, who grow into adults who are still on the drugs. The most striking moment in the film comes late, when a college senior says that when they get out into the world, they don’t think they’ll continue to use Adderall – that they’ll be able to leave work behind at work, not like in university where you have to stay up all night to study, and then immediately cuts to an adult who says he takes Adderall for work only, and if he didn’t have to work, he’d stop taking the drug. It’s a moment that rings true, because everyone is always coming up with excuses why they “need” something they want, but that at some point in the future, they will stop.

 

Had the film had more moments like that, it would probably work better than it ultimately does. My tolerance for this type of advocacy documentary usually is relatively low, and Take Your Pills is an example as to why they don’t work well for me. While director Alison Klayman at least gives people the opportunity to defend the use of these drugs – particularly doctors who don’t see a problem prescribing it, or in one ill-advised side story, a company who sells non-prescription versions of the drugs – it’s clear that Klayman doesn’t really agree with them, and rushes them off the screen rather quickly. She is, in effect, paying lip service to that side, while spending most of the rest of the time condemning the over prescription of the drugs. It’s a position that I happen to agree with – not every restless kid needs to be on the drug, and because so many kids are on it, it creates a culture where something as serious as giving your child a prescription drug on a permanent basis is seen as routine. Yet Klayman casts her net so wide in finding the stories of those effected, and the doctors and researchers who have something to say about it, the personal stories really do get lost. In the case of the trees getting lost for the forest.

 

That is a shame, because there are some interesting people in the documentary – the former NFL player, who started taking Adderall as a professional, and needed to get a doctor’s note, so it would be considered a performance enhancing drug for instance. Or the college artist who has been on it since third grade, and it bitter about it – and wants off of it, and his mother, who expressed at least some regret, while still defending that position. The movie has quick sequences dealing with use of the drug at university in general – where kids with prescriptions sell it to those who don’t or on Wall Street, where is has replaced cocaine as the stimulant of choice. All of these stories could be docs of their own – at least short ones – and perhaps would have been more interesting than Take Your Pills ends up being.

 

What we do get is a mountain of statistics thrown at us – and as much as Klayman tries to jazz up the style in those presentations, there is only so much you can do with, and a lot of doctors and researchers explaining the effects, the dangers, and how similar the drugs really are to meth. They even compare it to the opioid crisis in America.

 

The problem ultimately is though that Klayman doesn’t really find anything new here. This has been a well-documented problem for years now, so Klayman’s doc feels like it’s too little too late. There is some good stuff, but it’s buried under a mountain of good intentions.

Movie Review: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Directed by: Alison Klayman.

China has come a long way in becoming a more open society in the past few decades, yet still has a long way to go until they are truly open, truly free. Artist and activist Ai Weiwei almost perfectly embodies this contradiction in Chinese society. Decades ago, someone as openly critical of the Chinese government would be, like his father was, shipped off for “reeducation through hard labor” – and that is if they were lucky and weren’t executed or just “disappeared”. And yet, while this hasn’t happened to Ai Weiwei yet, the Chinese government did shut down his blog when he used it to openly and repeatedly criticize them in the wake of the earthquake that left tens of thousands dead – including thousands of school children crushed in poorly constructed government schools. One police officer even punched Ai in the head, causing him to need brain surgery. And then there was that three month period where Ai vanished – taken in by the police and questioned, apparently because of his finances, and then released – with a $2.4 million tax bill given to him. So yes, things have gotten better – but they are far from good.

Alison Klayman’s documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a fascinating portrait of the man who has become arguably China’s most famous modern artist. It tracks his development – from his nine year period in New York for the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, to his return to Beijing, where he became a fixture on the “underground” art scene – because the galleries did not want to show his type of art. Back then, he was doing things like photographing himself smashed a Han Dynasty vase, or painting over similar relics – sometimes with logos for things like Coca Cola. These were seen as shocking at the time – how could he “destroy” these pieces of Chinese history, but the symbolism is clear – China is destroying their own history everyday – and no one notices.

His career really took off in the early 2000s, and his reputation has simply grown, both internationally and inside China ever since. He now works on an enormous scale – making a collage of backpacks spelling out a simple phrase “She lived happily on this earth for seven years”, a quote from a parent of one those children killed in the earthquake. Ai was tireless in his effort to uncover how many children were killed – sending out volunteers across the country to collect the names and birthdates of the children killed, because apparently the Chinese government thought this information should be “classified”. When they shut down his blog, he takes to twitter – getting information out to his mainly followers as it happens. When the police follow and videotape him, he has his own videographer’s film them right back. Although he knows nothing will come out of his request for an investigation into the punch that police officer gave him, he goes around to every government agency he can to file a complaint. Why? Because for Ai, saying the system is flawed is useless – you have to show it is flawed. How else will it ever get better?

This documentary is mainly a celebration of Ai Weiwei and his work – essentially letting him tell his own story, either through interviews (with Klayman, or others that she observes), or through simply sitting back and watching, fly on the wall style, as Ai works. His life and his work have become so intertwined, it is almost impossible to tell the difference anymore – everything he does is part of his art. This is a beautiful, thoughtful, fascinating documentary about an important artist – and is one of the year’s best documentaries.