MELANIA (Dir: Brett Ratner) So, what's the point? How does this superficial,
wilfully deceitful reality readjustment serve the sociopathic ascension of
Trump's will (because everything has to)? Watching Melania get fitted for
expensive clothes in gaudy rooms, or talk up how extravagantly staged she
demands her balls be - and both happen a lot in Brett Ratner's unrelentingly
boring feature doc debut - only strengthen perceptions of her as a chilly,
lifeless socialite wannabe. Every one of the 104 long minutes is in the service
of grandiose affectation and cruel irony; when her scripted oration contains
gems like, “We are all one humanity”, and Ratner cuts to her holding her
husband's hand... mean, really? But then, the focus pivots from Melania to the
pageantry of her husband's inauguration, and Barron Trump gradually slinks
into frame, then into close-up. And I realised then what the point was - Trump
is tightening his family business’ grip on the White House beyond his years
and before our eyes. MELANIA is not the story of the First Lady of American
politics, but the imagining of the first homeland monarch in U.S. history. This
is not a film concerned at all with the America of today; it is propaganda that
serves the formation of a future non-democracy.
ONE STAR.