notjustaboutsex

photo: lambstar

What could Steve Bannon have meant by this line as he opens Alison Klayman’s documentary The Brink? He’s talking about visiting Europe with his populist agenda and his Torchbearer, Duck Commander, Phil Robertson’s film. I played it over twice but am still not sure what he was really trying to say. Apparently, he was totally surprised to discover that Birkenau was built specifically for the annihilation of a race—that meant  that intelligent men sat around with coffee cups making their plans. “Normal people who weren’t devils”, as he puts it. He should see BBC/HBO’s The Conspiracy, which dramatizes the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where the European lawyers and high level SS drink champagne and discuss the Final Solution like they were planning  a campaign to push rayon over silk. Kenneth Branagh playing General Heydrich was also charming. Bannon, an unlikely warrior,  never expresses any irony as the film shows him going about the business of aiding and abetting other populist and racist causes himself.

This fascinating look into the Fritto lover who sadly gave us Mr. Cheetos is particularly eerie because Bannon is not without some charm and wit, and one keeps wondering if he truly believe what he proffers. It feels like an act. As if he’s found a niche and he thinks he can win in this niche, so he sticks to it. If he had made more successful films, would the Right have become his cause, or is he in it out of defeat?  Could he possibly be so blind to his own racism? Does he think the Populist values of recreating the White World in his image is sensible or even evolutionary?

Not once in this film is the troubled environment mentioned except as a jokey excuse for some piece of legislation. Not once do we hear of the pain epidemic, lack of decent jobs for all people, high rate of infant mortality in our country and too many more issues that he has no time for.   He travels on private planes, enjoys expensive hotels, hangs out with ex Goldman Saxers and  doesn’t consider himself an elitist?

What is Raheem, a Muslim who sounds just like John Oliver doing working for him? That should be the sequel.  This guy goes on about all the Arabs living on the Edgeware Road for the last ten years in London.  I lived in London 25 years ago and there were always Arab stores and restaurants.  He and Epstein, a Republican candidate who wanted Trump to write his name on her pregnant belly are breathtaking in their self-deception. Apparently, Ms Epstein is a Messianic Jew, and was neatly defeated by Haley Stevens.  Aw.

What is so intelligent about this film, is that the director stays quiet, only occasionally asking him a question. Instead he lets his own blindness speak for him.

I don’t know and really don’t want to know what happened in his childhood to bring him to this place. He’s good looking (underneath the rust), funny, sort of aware and has potential to be a human. Can’t we get him into one of those Steiner nursery schools where he can learn to love himself first and then just maybe others? Only if Betsy DeVos stays out of it..

See the film.