‘Melania’ Isn’t Even Good Propaganda

Melania: Twenty Days to History starts with a long drone shot above the Atlantic Ocean. The camera glides over a white sand beach, a pool, a golfing green, before swooping down over the reclaimed terracotta tile roof of Donald Trump’s private Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, all while the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” blasts in the background. (The Stones have repeatedly ordered Donald Trump not to use their music at his rallies, but the band doesn’t own anything they recorded before 1971, including “Gimme Shelter,” released 1969.) A motorcade of black SUVs steam by, en route to an airport, where the doors are flung open and a stilettoed heel steps out onto the tarmac.

The sequence feels like the start of a summer blockbuster, and that’s by design. Like Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, Melania is a project with an explicit purpose: to create a movie star myth around Melania Trump, promoting the idea that she is anything other than the pitiable wife of one the most polarizing men on the planet. (The president uses the words himself when he greets her on screen for the first time: “You look so beautiful — movie star.”) But the film, despite the tens of millions of dollars poured into its production and promotion by Amazon MGM Studios, falls far short of that goal while also failing to offer an iota of insight into its subject.

It’s a shame, because in the right hands, this could have been not just a great film but an important historical artifact. Director Brett Ratner had practically unlimited funds at his disposal and virtually unrestricted access to the enigmatic partner of one of most consequential figures in American history. Gifted that opportunity, Ratner (whose credits include Rush Hour and X-Men: Last Stand) uses it to ask such probing questions as “Who is your favorite musical artist?” (Her answer is Michael Jackson.) 

Ratner appears to revel in his proximity to power rather than use that proximity to learn anything about it. In the early hours of the morning following the president’s second 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 their exchange; he excuses himself shortly after to go to bed.)

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The film follows Trump for the three weeks leading up to the inauguration as she picks out her outfits, coos over invitation mock-ups, consults on party menus (to include a golden egg topped with caviar, of course), marks the one-year anniversary of losing her mother, and prepares to move back into White House. Instead of structuring the movie around interviews with its subject, most of the information we learn about Melania Trump comes in the form of a scripted voice over delivered by the first lady herself. 

It’s like watching a $40 million book report filmed by three of the most celebrated cinematographers working today (Barry Peterson of Zoolander fame, Michael Mann’s favorite D.P., Dante Spinotti, and longtime David Fincher collaborator Jeff Cronenweth). There’s something cute about that — like Elle Woods hiring a Coppola to shoot her Harvard Law School admissions video — but their impressive camera work does very little to make Melania any more compelling.  

The film plods painfully along for 104 minutes, dodging relevance at every possible juncture. The most intimate conversation the filmmakers capture between Trump and her husband is a phone call on which he drones on about the certification of the 2024 election (“landslide,” “big win”). The closest it comes to any moment of real tension is on inauguration morning when there appears to be some issue installing the first lady’s Hamburglar-esque headpiece. (It’s hard to tell what the problem is, exactly, because the footage is chopped up and interlaced with footage of movers swapping Biden’s White House furniture for Trump’s, but it’s clear from the facial expressions and the way she constantly touches the hat throughout the day that something has gone terribly awry.)
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And then there is the moment on inauguration day when Melania reflects on her status as immigrant and the first lady, remarking, “No matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity.” It passes quickly and without introspection. 
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Whether or not there is any public appetite for a film of this nature, at this particular moment in time, remains to be seen. Melania debuts in the wake of a violent, prolonged, and unprovoked assault by federal immigration agents on the city of Minneapolis, making the polished clips of the first lady inspecting fabric swatches a stomach-turning splitscreen to the cellphone footage of ICE agents tear-gassing, brutalizing and, in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, fatally shooting Americans from multiple angles. 

Amazon, at least, appears to think there is an audience for Melania. The distributor has planned a rollout with screenings in 3,300 theaters worldwide. At the one I attended, the earliest showing in New York City on the day Melania was released, the theater was barely a quarter full and almost everyone was a journalist. (Amazon declined to make the film available to reviewers ahead of its wide release.) The two exceptions were single men; one had a brown bag beverage. He left half way through.