Butler's Cinema Scene

“AMERICAN CHAOS” My rating: B

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Every liberal -minded American should see “American Chaos.”

Good luck with that.

Because however insightful it may be, Jim Stern’s documentary about Trump supporters is almost too painful to watch.

The film begins with a montage of Presidential campaign newsreel footage, starting with Teddy Roosevelt and ending with Donald Trump.

Stern then goes on to describe himself as growing up in a classic Kennedy Democrat household in Chicago. He still reveres Bobby Kennedy, whom he describes as generating “a feeling of empathy so deep it was infectious.”  Not until Obama did he feel a similar level of enthusiasm for a Presidential candidate.

But shortly after the beginning of the 2016 race Stern noticed something different about Trump and his adherents, something that bothered him so much that he grabbed his camera and spent several months crisscrossing America to interview Trump  voters.

The resulting documentary doesn’t tell us anything we haven’t heard elsewhere, but it’s interesting /frightening to hear these citizens explain their support.

Stern went into these conversations knowing that he wasn’t going to debate with his subjects, make snide comments or even speak disapprovingly of Trump (which doesn’t mean you can’t catch him biting his tongue on numerous occasions). He genuinely wanted to know what these folks believed…and why.

Filmmaker Jim Stern

He got an earful.

His travels took him to the Republican National Convention, coal country, and along the Texas/Mexico border where ranchers and farmers describe fighting an immigration war for 20 years.

He heard lots of talk about people being sick of politicians who are bought and sold, which of course isn’t exclusively a right-wing or a left-wing concern. Many interviewees said that whether you agree with him or not, Trump was real, presenting his genuine self to the public. (Gotta agree with that.)

Trump is viewed as an aspirational figure for anybody who wants to be rich…and in this country isn’t that everybody?

Stern also got a huge dose of seemingly irrational Hillary hatred; Stern himself believes that the Democratic candidate’s “basket of deplorables” comment did more to galvanize the opposition than anything else in the campaign.

But what really struck Stern was the overwhelming desire of Trump voters to go back in time to an America before globalization.  Nobody says anything overtly racist, yet many are like the man who man talks of 1957 as being the height of happiness in American life (as long, of course, as  you were’t part of a racial, religious or sexual minority).

Because he swore not to diss Trump or his minions, Stern turns occasionally to sociologists and other  professionals for their thoughts.  One  professor suggests that Trump’s 13 years on TV’s “The Apprentice” was the single biggest thing that led to his victory.  Voters thought they knew him even before he announced his candidacy.

After watching “American Chaos” you’ll understand how we got to where we are.  Not that that knowledge will help you sleep any better.

|Robert W. Butler