Triumph of the Void: Melania – A Couture Study in Cold, Deep Nothingness
From our own tame or not so tame journo; Prick Knobinson reviews the much talked about “documentary” of the First ‘Lady’ of the USA – Melania.
Transcript
Ignore the twitching in my left eyelid; it is merely the rhythmic protest of a nervous system subjected to a hundred and four minutes of pure, unadulterated high-fashion rot. If Bergman were here, he would have ordered a double vodka and a suicide note by the second reel, but I am made of sterner, albeit heavily medicated, stuff.
Here is the dispatch from the front lines of the aesthetic apocalypse:
Triumph of the Void: Melania – A Couture Study in Cold, Deep Nothingness
There is a particular kind of boredom that can only be bought with stolen public funds. It is a lush, velvet-lined tedium that smells of imported lilies and state-enforced adoration. This brings us to The Eternal Grace of the First Lady, Melania: a cinematic vanity project so profoundly vacant that it manages to make the crushing of a nascent democracy feel like a mere backdrop for a particularly long and expensive perfume advertisement.
Amazon – those digital pimps who would sell their own mothers for a prime subscription – reportedly shelled out $40 million for the rights to this necrotic ulcer. In reality, it is a hagiography of a woman who appears to have the internal life of a mannequin stuffed with industrial vacuum.
The film consists almost entirely of our protagonist walking. She walks through her empty life and its gaudy rooms in slow motion, a technique Leni Riefenstahl pioneered to turn mass-murderers into gods. She walks past lines of bayonets in silk organza; she walks toward the camera with the determined, kohl-rimmed stride of someone who holds the secret to spotting exactly when her husband’s nappy needs a “personnel transition.”
Every shot is filtered through a golden haze, a shimmering fog presumably designed to blur the inconvenient sight of protesters being pepper-sprayed and shot in the middle distance. It is an operatic image of power and beauty that would make a Wagnerian hero weep with envy.
There are more costume changes than there are coherent policy positions in a Trump presser. It is a fashion show held in a graveyard. While Americans struggle with essential medical bills, she floats through $35 million worth of marketing blitz in Dior scarves.
The camera lingers on her with a devotion usually reserved for religious icons or people who have just signed a $28 million licencing cheque to the First Lady personally. The director, Brett Ratner – a man described as the “most loathed person on set” – reportedly spent the shoot feasting while the crew went without breaks. It shows. The film has the bloated, greasy feel of a man who chews gum and throws it into your coffee.
The most haunting aspect of this “triumph” is the supporting cast – a collection of socialites and terrified bureaucrats who fawn over her with the frantic energy of people who would very much like to keep their passports. To witness these “friends” is to witness a masterclass in the theatre of the absurd. The moment her vacant gaze drifts toward a new floral arrangement, you can see the masks slip. The smiles do not just fade; they collapse. It is the look of people who have realised that while the champagne is vintage, the conversation is leaden.
It is telling that the credits are shorter than the list of human rights violations currently being investigated in the capital. A “whopping” two-thirds of the film’s staff requested to be uncredited. The “Special Thanks” section reads less like a film credit and more like a witness protection registry for those ashamed of the propaganda element.
The fat, mad dictator himself haunts the periphery like a ranting, lecherous ghost, a loud, sweating appendage to his wife’s silent, passive, vapid, sartorial elegance (she is an ornament, but an accomplice who really cannot escape the legalities that will follow a deposed Trump). He provides the noise; she provides the Eva Braun flower arranging, decorating the corridors of his blood soaked reign. It is perfectly edited, beautifully lit, and entirely dead behind the eyes. It is, quite simply, the most stylish disaster of the decade – the empty, gilt figurine for a rapidly unravelling fascist regime. Triumph of the Will it is not. More the triumph of Mar-a-Lago gilt, fur, and no knickers.
I am going to have another gin and see if I cannot find a way to make sense of the void. Save us from the sequel, indeed.
Scottish left, pro-Indy, pro-LGBTIQA
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