A harrowing, if not exactly unexpected, image emerges near the end of Jamie Roberts’ documentary “Four Hours at the Capitol.” Egged on by Trump’s Big Lie, a Capitol Police Officer trying to push back the ever-growing mob on January 6, is forcibly dragged into the chaos. As shouts to kill him with his own gun echo, he is beaten nearly to death as a Thin Blue Line Flag triumphantly flies in the foreground. His body-cam footage shows the first-person chaos as he pleads for life, his body pushed every which way as he repeats over and over again that he has kids.
Resembling a found-footage horror movie, “Four Hours at the Capitol” meticulously, and chronologically, reconstructs the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Interviewing everyone from Senators to Proud Boys, Roberts’ film is a tough watch – unflinching in the acute physical and psychological horror that Donald Trump supporters perpetrated on those within the Capitol – but it is also a profoundly unsettling document about the still-festering wound. Somber, depressing, and ultimately a must-watch, “Four Hours” moves through that fateful day with precise clarity – toggling between the lawmakers and those within the mob as the situation grew increasingly dire.
However, Roberts’ almost exclusively avoids editorializing, allowing each side to present their point of view about the events of that fateful day. We track Proud Boys – Eddie Block and Bobby Pickles – in addition to hearing the first-person testimony from the Capitol police on the opposing side. Roberts’ allows his subjects to essentially damn themselves, waxing poetic about their role in ‘taking back the people’s house’ as they violently push their way into the Capitol. Giving these people a platform is, perhaps, a contentious choice, but it allows “Four Hours” to showcase the troubled reasoning behind the movement to take the Capitol and the comeuppance that they see post-insurrection.
After establishing the various players, and sides, Roberts almost exclusively switches to recorded video, and CCTV, in the final half of the film – playing out prolonged images of the insurrectionists muscling their way into the Capitol building, alongside the frightened police officers who are at a loss as to how to control such a growing mass of people and the representatives who fear for their lives. For a bit more than half the film, Roberts’ allows images of the assault on the Capitol to play out. The sustained document is overwhelmingly emotional and infuriating.
What becomes frighteningly clear is the terror of those who worked in the building – the police officers who thought that this was their last stand, the congressional aids who feared death as they hid, and the representatives who said prayers as they were evacuated. It’s unnerving and further hammers the central theme without the need for political or historical contextualization. This was a failed coup that came precariously close to succeeding. Right before that Capitol Officer was dragged through the mob, he was locked in a tug of war at the underground entrance, his body camera footage resembling a medieval siege, as an undersized police force contended with thousands of Trump supporters.
As the film comes to a close, Roberts takes stock of the lives lost – both that day and in the aftermath – but a particular sect remains silent – Trump’s enablers within Congress. While he interviews a few Republicans – including anti-Trump stalwart Adam Kinzinger, in addition to Trump apologist Buddy Carter (looking as terrible as you’d expect) – the rest remain the unseen boogeyman. Instead, they continue to exist, and sometimes flourish, by repeating Trump’s lie about Jan. 6th. As the film makes startlingly clear, Trump’s worldview has taken on a shocking amount of continued support with a collective sense of amnesia growing about January 6. Roberts’ film offers a corrective to that historical distance, confronting Trumpism in brutal, graphic, detail. [A-]
“Four Hours at the Capitol” hits HBO on October 20.