Recommendations of the Editorial team
“Melania: Twenty Days to History” begins with a long drone shot over the Atlantic. The camera glides over a white-sand beach, a pool, a golf green, before swooping down over the restored terracotta tile roof of Donald Trump’s private Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago, while the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” plays loudly in the background. (The band has repeatedly banned Trump from using its music at his rallies, but does not own the rights to any recordings before 1971 — including 1969’s “Gimme Shelter.”) A convoy of black SUVs speeds by, heading toward an airport, where doors are flung open and a stiletto heel hits the asphalt.
The sequence feels like the start of a summer blockbuster – and that’s exactly how it’s meant to be. Like Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” “Melania” has a clear goal. Creating a movie star myth around Melania Trump and propagating the idea that she is anything other than the pitiful wife of one of the most polarizing men on the planet. (The President himself uses these words when he first greets her in the film: “You look so beautiful – like a movie star.”)
But the film clearly misses this goal – despite the tens of millions of dollars that Amazon MGM Studios invested in production and marketing – and at the same time does not offer the slightest insight into its protagonist.
Missed opportunity as a contemporary document
That’s a shame, because in the right hands it could have been not only a great film, but also an important historical document. Director Brett Ratner had almost unlimited financial resources and almost unlimited access to the enigmatic partner of one of the most influential figures in American history. Armed with this opportunity, Ratner (known for “Rush Hour” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”) uses it to ask questions of depth: “Who is your favorite musician?” (Your answer: Michael Jackson.)
Ratner seems to enjoy his proximity to power more than using it to learn about it. In the early morning hours after the second presidential inauguration, he uses a few minutes alone with the First Couple to marvel: “I can’t believe we’re in the White House right now.” (Even Trump seems bored by the exchange; shortly afterwards he excuses himself and goes to sleep.)
High gloss without content
The film follows Trump in the three weeks leading up to the inauguration as she chooses outfits, admires invitation designs, helps design party menus (including a golden egg with caviar), marks the first anniversary of her mother’s death and prepares to return to the White House. Instead of structuring the film around interviews with its main character, most of the information about Melania Trump comes from a scripted voiceover spoken by the First Lady herself.
It looks like a $40 million presentation, filmed by three of today’s most renowned cinematographers: Barry Peterson (of Zoolander fame), Michael Mann’s preferred director of photography Dante Spinotti and long-time David Fincher collaborator Jeff Cronenweth. There’s something cute about it – like Elle Woods hiring a Coppola to shoot her Harvard Law School application video – but her striking imagery doesn’t make Melania any more interesting.
104 minutes idle
The film drags along painfully slowly over 104 minutes and consistently avoids any relevance. The most intimate conversation between Trump and her husband that the filmmakers capture is a phone call in which he speaks in a monotone about the certification of the 2024 election (“landslide victory,” “big victory”). The moment that comes closest to real tension occurs on the morning of the inauguration, when there appear to be problems securing the First Lady’s hamburglar-like headdress. (It’s hard to say exactly what goes wrong, as the footage is fragmented and interspersed with footage of movers swapping Biden’s furniture for Trump’s. But facial expressions and the constant adjustment of hats throughout the day leave no doubt that something has gone terribly wrong.)
Fleeting messages, no thought
Then there’s the moment on Inauguration Day when Melania reflects on her status as an immigrant and First Lady and says, “No matter where we come from, we share the same humanity.” The sentence rushes by – without any deepening.
Whether there is any public interest in a film of this kind at this point remains to be seen. “Melania” appears in the shadow of a violent, prolonged and unprovoked attack by federal immigration authorities on the city of Minneapolis. Against this backdrop, the slick, polished images of the First Lady inspecting fabric swatches seem like an unbearable split-screen to the cell phone videos of ICE officers using tear gas, abusing people and – in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti – fatally shooting Americans from various angles.
No audience in sight
Amazon still seems to believe in an audience. The distributor is planning a worldwide cinema release in 3,300 screens. At the screening I attended – the earliest screening in New York City on release day – the room was barely a quarter full, almost entirely with journalists. (Amazon had refused to make the film available for reviews before its theatrical release.) The only exceptions were two single men; one of them had a drink in a brown bag. He left halfway through.
