While normally we try to keep our little corner of the internet relatively apolitical, even the most politically inactive, apathetic or far-removed of us has had cause to gape in awestruck horror at the campaign being run by frontrunner candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. With soundbites and speeches that sound like satire, and countless elegant and not-so-elegant takedowns —of his suitability, his honesty, his intelligence, his basic goddamn decency, even his business savvy— apparently doing little to stem his incomprehensible popularity, we’ve done what we always do when despair hits. We’ve gone to the movies.
So here are ten films that have given us food for thought when considered in light of Trump’s seemingly irresistible rise, and the only slightly hyberbolic disastrous consequences that could possibly ensue if he goes unchecked. Spoiler alert: while some are comedies and others are deadly serious, all are cautionary tales.
Richard III – “Richard III” (1995)
As icy as Ian McKellen‘s blue-eyed stare, this brilliant version of Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” updated to a parallel 1930s fascist Britain, must rank among the chilliest films ever made. Moving with a relentless, reptilian intelligence, it tracks the deviously ugly rise and brisk, deserved fall of McKellen’s Duke of Gloucester as he removes every obstacle to his coronation as King Richard. It’s a particularly fascinating work of alternate history, considering the foothold that fascism had in Britain during this period (it’s in itself a cautionary tale for the “it could never happen here” brigade), and McKellen, along with co-writer and director Richard Loncraine (plus absolutely spectacular production design) mine the parallels for all they are worth. But it’s also a portrait of a certain type of megalomaniac —Richard is a self-confessed villain from the outset, but his sociopathic charm generates its own weird brand of popularity —he wields a seductive power that is only heightened by the soliloquies he delivers straight to camera like a really, really, super evil Ferris Bueller. With a star-studded cast fielding the anachronistic, musical dialogue with perfect fluidity (as well as British thesps Jim Broadbent, Maggie Smith, Adrian Dunbar, Kristin Scott-Thomas, and Dominic West, Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. bring an interestingly American modernity to their roles), it’s a clinical examination of the danger posed by a man who wants power only for power’s sake. He will lie and deceive (and in Richard’s case, rack up a body count that would be the envy of Zodiac Killer) to get it —but what sort of a human will he be by the time he gets to wield it?
President Judson Hammond – “Gabriel Over The White House” (1933)
Anyone looking for an insight into the American mindset the last time that the world saw the rise of an unstoppably powerful authoritarian, totalitarian leader could do a lot worse than to watch Gregory La Cava’s utterly bonkers 1933 curio “Gabriel Over The White House,” a film released to coincide with FDR taking office that essentially pleads for America to become a fascist dictatorship. The film stars Walter Huston (father of John and grandfather of Angelica) as President Judd Hammond, a corrupt and useless leader of a country overrun with gangsters and big business who has a car accident that puts him into a coma. When he awakens, he’s undergone a complete transformation: he’s had a spiritual vision and sets out to save the United States. He does this by expelling business interests from government, dissolving a Congress that tries to impeach him, nationalizes the alcohol industry, imposes martial law, sets up a brown-shirted secret police and begins executing his enemies, particularly in organized crime. Oh, and then he uses a secret weapon to blackmail the rest of the world into peace. In some hands, this would be a cautionary tale, but what’s so fascinating about the film (based on a novel by T.F. Tweed) is that it plays like unapologetic wish fulfillment, virtually a propaganda movie demanding a leader who’ll pull America out of the Great Depression by any means necessary, even at the cost of its own constitution. It’s a fascinating, albeit terrifying capsule, and one that supplies more insight into the appeal of Trump to voters than we’d perhaps like to admit.
Idi Amin – “The Last King Of Scotland” (2006)
Powered by a career-defining, Oscar-winning performance by Forest Whitaker as Ugandan despot Idi Amin and based on the novel by Giles Foden, Kevin MacDonald‘s “The Last King of Scotland” is a bruising and brutal experience. But it’s not just in tracking the rise of Amin, who would suspend the country’s constitution, establish a military dictatorship and go on to murder 300,000 of his countrymen, that the story is valuable. With its fictionalized elements, it also becomes an intelligent dissection of both the white savior complex (as seen through the eyes of James McAvoy’s callow doctor Nicholas) and the kind of willful blindness that can afflict those nearest to the intoxicating influence of absolute power. And so Nicholas, who finds himself working in a clinic in Uganda more out of boredom than any idealistic commitment of helping people, only gradually comes to realize that the jolly, charismatic leader offering him career advancement, friendship, and even a kind of fatherhood, is actually a paranoid psychopath, and it’s not until he’s faced with a literal dismemberment that he understands the damage Amin is doing to the poverty-blighted nation. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the old saying goes. But “The Last King of Scotland” shows that corruption doesn’t stop with the man who wields the power. Rather, the reek of it seeps into everyone around him, and the whole power structure by increments. Which is why it is dangerous to wholly trust in any system of checks and balances to rein in a power-crazed demagogue: rot spreads.