The Brink - A Film Review By Eve Mykytyn

'If those who call themselves progressives want to sustain relevance, sooner or later they will have to engage in a proper intellectual exchange as name calling, misquoting and crude editing tactics do not do justice
to social justice.'

Introduction by GA: Steve Bannon is probably the most unpopular character as far as progressives and liberals are concerned. People who like to see themselves at the Left side of the political spectrum  regard Bannon as a vile hateful character as well as a rabid antisemite. Yet, symptomatically or even tragically, those who detest Bannon shy away from tackling his populist mantra. This is rather concerning considering the fact that Bannon has proven to be a shrewd political tactician and even a kingmaker. It is probably Bannon who carries the prime responsibility for Trump’s successful presidential campaign. Those who are fearful of Bannon revert to name-calling: they slalom in between his ideas with the hope that no one notices.
They do their best to avoid anything that may evoke thinking or resemble reasoning.  It is not a secret that those who currently claim to advocate social justice are apparently too fearful to engage with substance but they fail to do so in the name of social justice.  

 In the following film review Eve Myktyn tells us about Alison Klayman’s The Brink.  Mykytyn went to the film hoping to learn more about Bannon but it seems she left the cinema knowing more about Klayman’s phobia of the man. If those who call themselves progressives want to sustain relevance, sooner or later they will have to engage in a proper intellectual exchange as name calling, misquoting and crude editing tactics do not do justice to social justice.

A film review by Eve Mykytyn: Steve Bannon may well be, as he is often called,  the ‘architect of evil.’  But Alison Klayman’s mystifying documentary, The Brink, which sets out to “[use] Bannon’s own words and behaviors to reveal his hypocrisy and expose the danger he poses to liberal democracy”  fails to show Bannon as hypocritical or dangerous.   

The film’s opens begins with Bannon talking about a journey he made to World War II’s concentration camps. He notes that the Birkenau concentration camp was built using the finest of German engineering and wonders how ordinary Germans could get together and plan such a site. Perhaps Klayman felt that she couldn’t cut this otherwise disconnected scene because it showed Bannon to be an anti Semite, although he was simply musing about how a concentration camp came to be built. Is any question about any aspect of the Holocaust verboten? Apparently so, The Forward  interprets Bannon’s remarks as: “rhapsodiz[ing] about the precise engineering of one of the most evil thing humans have ever created, the Birkenau extermination camp.” 

Instead, of engaging with Bannon’s avowedly nationalist politics, much of the film is devoted to a fly-on-the-wall view of Bannon’s daily routine. Bannon eats and drinks (a combination of  Red Bull and a disgusting mess of green ‘diet’ juice), speaks at rallies, poses for photos, meets with nationalist leaders in Europe, touts his propaganda movie, and texts and talks endlessly on the phone: so much film time is devoted to the quotidian aspects of Bannon’s life that the shrewd and divisive political operative is reduced to boring. 

Klayman attempts to score a point by asking Bannon where he is, so that she can report that he is on an airfield for private planes. Is Bannon’s not particularly luxurious private plane, filled with his allies and journalists really relevant to the larger debate?  

The film follows Bannon to Toronto where he appears for a formal debate with David From on the proposition that the “future of western politics is populist, not liberal.”  This is finally the real debate. Is it ‘country first’ or do we have a responsibility to all without regard to borders? The debate can be found here (the first 10 minutes of chatter can be skipped): the exchange between two articulate men whose views are antithetical to each other is well worth the time. Tellingly, The Brink does not show the debate, instead we see the effects that Bannon’s presence evokes. The protests outside the debate are portrayed as huge and scary, inside Bannon gently confronts hecklers, whose poor behavior he comically attributes to an ‘ex-wife.’  That’s it. The Brink apparently feels no need to counter Bannon’s views or even better, simply show From’s effective dissent. 

When the film does allow Bannon to articulate his thesis, it is in a brief scene in which Bannon is speaking to a rally. In it, Bannon states that the benefits of citizenship should be distributed only to citizens, without regard to race, religion or sexual preference.  This is the core of the populist nationalist movement that helped elect Donald Trump and has scored victories in Britain, France, Belgium and Sweden.  Bannon’s current project is to knit together like-minded counter globalists from Europe and the United States. 

The Brink’s opposition to nationalist populism is left to Guardian reporter Paul Lewis who accuses Bannon of using “anti-Semitic tropes,” then interrupts Bannon’s denial. Bannon insists that there’s nothing nefarious about using the term “globalist” or criticizing George Soros for the NGOs he funds. Vogue claims Bannon uses the term globalist “with a wink and a nod…as a stand-in for Jews.”  Bannon’s movement is opposed to globalism. Is there a non anti Semitic way to oppose globalism? 

Just  in case anyone failed to understand the intended message, the film ends with a stirring homage to the current crop of new representatives with the background picture of Washington, DC lit in rainbow hues. Apparently, a diverse group of new congressmen and women is a refutation of Bannon and what he stands for, too bad that The Brink fails to explain why that may be so.

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