Review Of Steve Bannon's Film, "American Dharma"

Click here for the review, at ScreenDaily, by Lee Marshall. The film's been out there for a year, but no one wanted to give Bannon's rancid worldview any publicity. Director Erroll Morris grapples with Bannon's ideology and methodology and suggests that ignoring the political strategist is more dangerous than engaging him.

If you can’t convey the attraction, the director seems to be saying, you can’t convey the danger.

This is the issue with taking on a subject as media-savvy as Breitbart News co-founder Bannon: a man who is used to playing others, and controlling the message, was always going to be hard to play. Morris faced a similar challenge in The Unknown Known, his last cinematic sparring match with one of liberal America’s chief bogeymen, Donald Rumsfeld. But Rumsfeld was also, like The Fog of War’s Robert McNamara, a consummate politician unable to resist the cut and thrust of a debate on strategy. Bannon, for all the abyss that divides the two men’s views and styles, is a weaver of narratives, creator of images and editor of the truth, just like Morris, and simply goes quiet when asked questions he finds uncomfortable.

The result is a fascinating but also in some ways frustrating film, a game of tag that looks resoundingly cinematic but feels like more of a cable or VOD prospect - not least because it lacks the killer punch, the Bannon stumble or revelation that would make American Dharma newsworthy.