Amer­i­can Dhar­ma – first look review

Doc­u­men­tar­i­an Errol Mor­ris locks his inquisi­to­r­i­al gaze on the US polit­i­cal domain once again. Sim­i­lar in vein to his cel­e­brat­ed The Fog of War and The Unknown Known, Amer­i­can Dhar­ma scru­ti­nis­es con­tro­ver­sial polemi­cist Stephen K Ban­non: one-time Chief Strate­gist to Don­ald Trump and all-round heavy­weight firebrand.

Ban­non makes for an intrigu­ing and enig­mat­ic fig­ure. From film­mak­er to Bre­it­bart hon­cho to pres­i­den­tial advis­er, via alter­na­tive vir­tu­al cur­ren­cies, he fits the mould of a dis­tinct­ly 21^st cen­tu­ry poly­math. The film part­ly focus­es on his time as exec­u­tive chair­man with the Bre­it­bart News Net­work fol­low­ing Andrew Breitbart’s death in 2012. Ban­non was chiefly respon­si­ble for relaunch­ing the site as a plat­form for the alt-right and cat­a­pult­ed the con­cept of Trump-as-Pres­i­dent into the minds of many dis­en­fran­chised Amer­i­cans seek­ing some­thing brash, bold and new.

The film cov­ers Bannon’s can­ny cri­sis man­age­ment after alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct threat­ened to derail Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. It is a chas­ten­ing expe­ri­ence to lis­ten to Ban­non describe his fun­da­men­tal grasp of the tenets of pop­ulism and how he suc­cess­ful­ly steered his charge out of danger.

In a break from his recent offer­ings, Mor­ris allows his cam­era to peer in on his sub­ject from var­i­ous angles, and inter­cuts the inter­view mate­r­i­al with archive news footage, social media posts and ref­er­ences to old movies. (For rea­sons unknown, Mor­ris has ditched his ​‘Inter­ro­tron’ set-up – the famed con­trap­tion that ensures his sub­jects stare straight down the bar­rel of the lens.)

Is Ban­non a racist? Was he the archi­tect of Trump’s noto­ri­ous ​‘trav­el ban’? How does he feel to have been turfed out by the man he helped ele­vate to Office? Alle­ga­tions are thrown at him and yet, for the most part, the avowed ​‘apoc­a­lyp­tic ratio­nal­ist’ proves to be an artic­u­late, eru­dite and genial inter­vie­wee. The harsh­est of crit­i­cisms are met with calm reflection.

Rela­tions between Mor­ris and Ban­non become increas­ing­ly chum­my as the film pro­gress­es and one begins to won­der whether the ter­ri­er-like approach of Alex Gib­ney might have made for a more exco­ri­at­ing inter­ro­ga­tion – cer­tain­ly for a fig­ure who open­ly pro­fess­es to endorse the line ​“It’s bet­ter to reign in Hell than serve in Heav­en” from John Milton’s ​‘Par­adise Lost’.

Ban­non opines that fur­ther chaos is just around the cor­ner and that we should be braced for the rev­o­lu­tion. But who is Stephen K Ban­non, real­ly, and what is his modus operan­di? Agent provo­ca­teur? Agit­prop extra­or­di­naire? Or scorned sooth­say­er of our col­lec­tive future?

Mor­ris would pre­fer us to draw our own con­clu­sions. Amer­i­can Dhar­ma has its faults, but nev­er­the­less an engross­ing por­trait emerges – one of a polar­is­ing char­ac­ter who sat in the con­trol room as the alt-right wreck­ing ball demol­ished con­ven­tion, ortho­doxy and ush­ered in a new dawn. Like it or not, Ban­non is not done yet.