11/8/16
The Orchard
Directors: Duane Andersen, Yung Chang, Garth Donovan, Vikram Gandhi, Raul Gasteazoro, Andrew Beck Grace, Jamie Goncalves, Alma Har’el, Daniel Junge, Alison Klayman, Martha Shane, Ciara Lacy, Elaine McMillion Sheldon, Bassam Tariq, Don Argott, Sheena M. Joyce, Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 10/24/17
Opens: November 3, 2017
If we had a end-year award for the movie with the most directors, 11/8/16 would win hands-down. Winning, in fact, is what “11/8/16” is all about as the eighteen filmmakers located throughout the U.S. including Hawaii, take the pulse of the American public to get opinions on the 2017 presidential election. White Americans and ethnics announce their views in no uncertain terms, most finding strong reasons to vote for either Clinton or Trump, but while only neo-nazis and white supremacists will admit that racism is their principal motive for voting as they do, we do not get a strong sense that most people facing the cameras could articulate clear reasons for their hero. The chant “USA USA USA USA” is hardly a reason for a vote unless you believe that one candidate is against the USA, but the folks on the side of the former secretary of state are hardly more adept at justifying their votes.
What’s salient about this film is that ordinary people are given their say, those who the country as a whole does not pay great attention to such as the Sikhs in Queens, NY or the homeless person in Honolulu, nor do the genuine concerns of coal miners in West Virginia cut much ice with the Chadonnay sippers on the coasts.
Given that on the night of presidential elections, the returns knock out drama with which other TV dramas and reality shows cannot compete, we do get a sense that the voters watching their screens on November 8, 2016 from 9 p.m. through the wee hours have reason to bite their fingernails, cry and cheer depending on which team they support. If you’ve been following the political game regularly you know that some journals and pundits gave Trump as low as a seven percent chance of winning. Yet his supporters never come across feeling that the game is lost, hoping that the underdog would smash through the opposition and rally all the way to victory. The one group that knew they had no chance of winning were the supporters of presidential candidate Evan McMullin, who spent his career in the CIA and Goldman Sachs yet calls himself a liberal democrat.
One Massachusetts guy, a good father who is seen playing ball with one of his young sons while otherwise relaxing on the couch of his spacious house wears a “Make American Great Again” cap, but with a nod to originality eschews the Trumpian red cap for a black one. His wife voted for Trump as well but puts down her husband not for his vote but for his views that America will be paradise under Trump’s administration. Still another, deeply wronged by society having spent thirty years on death row before his exoneration, is happy simply to be able to vote for the first time in three decades. Anthony Ray Hinton’s “I voted” sticker on his forehead is more important to him than his choice for the Oval office.
Less emotional are the people at the Los Angeles Times who, to assure scooping the other media set up two separate headlines: one stating that Trump had an upset win, the other lauding the first woman president. The most emotional people, the people who have most to lose by a Trump victory, are immigrants who fear deportation. Their strictly personal concerns are more important than the interests of the country as they cannot afford to give politics a wide berth the way secure, moneyed citizens can—those who argue that they are for asking you to give something to the country and not to depend on your country to give everything to you.
From the looks of the film it was put together on a single day filmed under eighteen directors—which makes it unique among movies hit the screens this year.
Unrated. 104 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Comments, readers? Agree? Disagree? Why?
Story – B
Acting – B
Technical – B+
Overall – B
