“You always wear two shirts?” someone asks Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former Chief Strategist. Looking back on old photos – openly remarking his distaste for reflecting over memories – we see that his fashion choice, layering one collared shirt atop another, is a habit so old he can’t even remember when it started – same goes for his sly smile. “You smirk and it’s uncomfortable for me,” a reporter comments, after Bannon dismisses accusations pointed at his adept dog-whistling. He’s a man who has grown accustomed to treating serious global issues like an extra shirt he’s able to button up while grinning at you. Referring to sites specifically constructed for mass murder as feats of precision engineering, Bannon describes spaces where hate resulted in death regularly as “places built by humans, humans who are not devils;” people who were simply always able to separate politics from humanity.
Director Alison Klayman’s (“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”) often haunting observational documentary, “The Brink,” follows the former chairman of Breitbart News from fall 2017 through last year’s midterm elections, and the brief thereafter, focusing on his mission to spread economic nationalism – values he describes as “old school Christian democracy, rooted in European tradition.” After Bannon’s dismissal from his position at the White House, the self-described “populist” shifts his attention to various countries across the Atlantic, before returning to his homeland for the mid-term elections. The award-winning filmmaker is a one-woman crew on the project, and Klayman’s tenacious fly on the wall, verité approach illuminates the cynical limitations of Bannon’s cruel human worldview through day-to-day contradictions, far more than an interview-style documentary where such a figure is given a platform to talk in circles ever possibly could.
When Errol Morris’ interview doc with Steve Bannon, “American Dharma,” premiered in Venice last year it became instantly polarizing, with some criticizing the filmmaker for giving such an established manipulator a strong platform; “Morris doesn’t agree with his subject, but he’s willing to hear Bannon out,” as our review put it. Klayman’s approach is a wholly different method. She follows his campaign, from meeting to meeting and rally to rally, only occasionally interjecting, commanding a great deal of restraint on many occasions, and respectfully holding her tongue in other situations where many politically minded filmmakers would surely struggle to do so.
Sometimes, the filmmaker doesn’t even need to poke and prod to get anything out of him. In one of the most telling conversations between director and subject, Klayman, who speaks fluent Mandarin, corrects Bannon’s pronunciation of a name. He struggles greatly to live up to the challenge of uttering it right. “You know any people who pronounce it like that?” he asks her. “About a billion…” “No, no, I’m not talking about the people in China,” Bannon interrupts.
In another scene, discussing a documentary being produced titled, “Trump @ War,” the question of its agenda is raised by Klayman. Is his film blatant propaganda? At first, Bannon smiles the inquiry off, but then perks up, “What would Leni Riefenstahl do?” he ponders, referencing the director of the Nazi Party’s infamous “Triumph of the Will.” “How would she cut that scene?” He pretends to be joking, but this always friendly demeanor hides a carefully calculated social tactic. When faced with opposition, Bannon writes off his own comments as a self-aware jest, hoping that humble recognition will win him support. He wields the amusing guise of self-dismissive irony as a humanizing weapon. “It’s not a persuasion film, it’s a piece of propaganda,” he is captured openly admitting in a later interaction.
“The Brink” thoroughly showcases just how much of a master manipulator Bannon truly is, having mastered a methodology that enables him to cater his core concepts to a similar kind of common folk, by using hot phrases they can understand in a few simple words. To convince voters their country needs mass deportation, plant the words “a wall.” Use sophisticated sounding terms like “chain migration” in conjunction with discussions of Islam, which continues to rile and confuse the uneducated.
“People don’t know you’re a real person,” someone expresses to Bannon near the end of the doc, comparing him to iconic “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader. Earlier montages show him glad-handing and posing for selfies with supporters. Any time a woman and a man request a photo with him, he insists the lady stand between them. “A rose between two thorns,” is revealed to be a favorite candid catchphrase, one he spits out at every opportunity. He’s sometimes self-deprecating, even describing himself as another George Lucas character, Jabba the Hutt; but he’s simultaneously convinced himself he’s actually doing the world a service, pushing opportunity buttons as a simple means to an end. Klayman asks Bannon what else he’s considered doing with his time on Earth. “What else would I be doing?” Of course, a question would be his answer. [B]