Watching movies in the shadow of President Trump.
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival started under President Obama and ended under President Trump. It also featured hundreds of people using movies to avoid the inauguration, a Women’s March through frozen streets, and movies that acted as direct rebukes to the version of The United States that President Trump wants to create. Following the lead of puffy-jacketed volunteers, the tone of the entire festival was warm hospitality toward films and folks from all walks of life and all corners of the planet.
I saw only 23 movies, so I didn’t get to catch anti-Trumpist movies like Beatriz at Dinner, The Incredible Jessica James, or Mudbound, but there were still several I caught that felt like big middle fingers to the ideology that could barely fill half the National Mall on Inauguration Day.
The Big Sick
There will be many “movies we need right now” in the age of Trump, but The Big Sick is the movie we need right now. It raises the bar on romantic comedies, yet it also quietly subverts all the bullshit we thought we got out of our national system years ago, only to find it re-litigated by an emergent crowd rocking Pepe the Frog pins they bought off Etsy.
First of all, it focuses on an interracial relationship between two people who clearly, unabashedly, Bogey-and-Bacall level dig each other. Second of all, we get a ton of screentime with a delightfully stuck-in-the-mud, conservative, Pakistani, immigrant, Muslim family who want an arranged marriage for their Western-raised son. The humor has a kind edge to it, and a ton of people should recognize their own family in The Big Sick, regardless of the external labels. My dad was a goofy, intelligent, stubborn, irritating white boy from small town Texas, and I saw his reflection in the goofy, intelligent, stubborn, irritating Muslim man from Pakistan (played by Bollywood legend Anupam Kher).
https://twitter.com/emilyvgordon/status/825838927672020992
Co-written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, based on their own relationship, The Big Sick tells the story of Kumail (playing himself like L.A.) and Emily (Zoe Kazan) navigating their cultural differences and an illness that brings Emily’s parents (played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) into the fold. It’s funny as hell, sweet, sad, and wonderful, and at least a few people will scratch their heads, wondering how they could have seen Kumail as, GASP, a regular human being even though, DOUBLE GASP, he has a different skin color and cultural religious heritage.
It will be the same shock when people enjoy horror anthology XX only to realize it, TRIPLE GASP, was written and directed solely by women.
Nanjiani’s charm could cause a KKK meeting to disband, and Hunter and Kazan’s strength and wit here are inspiring. This is the exact film that backward troglodytes will accuse of being part of the secret Hollywood cabal to indoctrinate people to, QUADRUPLE GASP, like their neighbors. Maybe it is. Good for it. It will sneakily infiltrate the minds of people who don’t understand why thousands are protesting at airports right now, yet still want a harmless, super fun rom-com to watch. Anything to get people to recognize the core humanity sitting across the table from them.
https://twitter.com/Nick_Offerman/status/825540132052754432
Know of another movie we need to watch in the shadow of Trump? Let us know in the comments section or email scott@filmschoolrejects.com with the subject “Trump Movies.”