At the risk of self identifying, I will not be attending nor watching Monday's inaugural ceremonies. A choice. not from a place of denial, nor from a place of vehement defiance, as was demonstrated by many of those of this incoming administration back in 2020.
As a filmmaker, journalist, and even more, a storyteller for cause, I have measured my intended neglect carefully. I am tuning out because I have accepted the inevitable oncoming mayhem that will be forthcoming due to this administration. Whereas I cannot support it by hailing the ceremonies, I can neither join in the mockery of our late night variety shows because sadly, I firmly believe there are lessons to be learned for America and that starts officially on Monday.
My infant country has never really suffered through an extremist government nor any of the issues that go with it. Whereas we could study our own external bad behavior where we have installed despots in some land where most passport-less Americans have never even thought of traveling, it is not real, simply because it was or is someone else's problem. Even our news media only begins to cover it, once it is seemingly, out of nowhere, a problem for the USA. The networks then report it as if Superman were now coming to the rescue of these poor souls who somehow got tied to the tracks of their own volition. So it should be no surprise that I will try to resist all temptation to watch the news from this day, neither on the news channels themselves, nor definitely not in snippet form on my social media feeds. After all, now we know they won’t be fact checked.
I also know that I cannot just simply turn the dial as it were, not only because that is a term and action of the past but also because I worry I will only witness more of the endless diatribe of reality TV shows that normalized bombastic interactions between housewives and basketball player's wives. Or even worse, encouraging people to risk everything, including their last modicum of pride for more possessions from Amazon. So, no, instead I will escape by turning to the movies, sort of.
Though fictitious and at face value purely for entertainment purposes, movies and with rare occasions, made for TV films, can sometimes get us to see things in a different manner, pique our curiosity, or at worst, regretfully, even convince us of facts not in evidence. Just look at how TV programming shaped this incoming presidency and the perceptions of leadership.
Movies are often at their best when they cast their projectionist light on some of the crucial topics and true to life stories of times gone by. And, it is for this reason why instead of tuning in to watch the monster truck pile up of inaugural attendees, I will be watching films from a list I have discerningly crafted representing the 100-plus years of American cinema.
I have chosen one seminal American film (with one exception), one from each decade, drawing from examples of more than a century of bad behavior, scandal and corruption – political and financial. I have chosen only narrative feature films because even though there were a lot of documentaries that answered my criteria, I felt that watchlist would be too excessive, let alone an even more depressing playlist on this day of all days. It's also why I took obvious choices like “V for Vendetta” off the list as these selected screenings were more of intellectual reflection than a training session for the grand and inevitable rebellion.
Instead I have chosen films, most that I have once seen and to which I have some storyteller’s connection. My list also includes three films I have never seen, but they answer the mission even in title alone let alone what I have learned of them through online blogs.
Lastly, all the films deal with the various issues that suddenly seem current anew: institutionalized racism, systemic corruption, abuse of power; propaganda and misinformation; scapegoating and unlawful persecution; labor welfare abuse and exploitation; sexual misconduct and discrimination; and even over-entitled disillusionment that fuels the ignorance of recognizing the obvious truth.
I invite you to watch any or all of these on your own and or feel free to check back in with me for my quick-wrap commentaries to which I welcome your film related comments, shares and likes.
My list is as follows:
1910 D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, I will be watching the one with a new score by DJ Spooky.
1920 Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, The new version with 25 extra minutes of restored footage.
1930 Chaplin’s Modern Times a classic I last watched in a hip club and art gallery in Cuba.
1940 I add Orson Welles Citizen Kane, a rosebud of my own film school days and clearly reflective of news media of today.
1950 Next up is Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd starring an Andy Griffith like you’ve never seen and might never recover from.
1960 Otto Preminger’s Advise and Consent, a political drama with an all star cast including many of Washington DC elites of the day.
1970 Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men on the Watergate Scandal, need I say more.
1980s Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning a film I watched last while visiting the south.
1990 A much needed satire Wag the Dog by another of my film heroes, Barry Levinson.
2000 Rise of Evil which kind of counts as two films and almost qualifies as a documentary.
2010 American dystopian action film The Hunger Games is the Martini shot as we call it in the biz and I might just have to pour one of my own at this point.
2020 And lastly, thinking man’s director Adam McKay cautionary grotesque tale Don’t Look Up.
See you at the movies.