The beauty of film is that it's for everyone- anyone can find something they like. The cinematic arts appeal to so many people with so many tastes and ideals, a movie like this coming out during one of the most divisive elections our country has seen is no surprise. Also, one of the beautiful things about our country is our freedom of speech- while I may not agree with what one person says or thinks, I feel they have a right to say it and think it. Having said that, I am definitely not one of D'souza's intended demographic, and I am also not completely sold on which side is the better option this election. I, like many Americans, am not happy with our current options for who should be the leader of our nation. I am by no means a Trump supporter, but I am also not fully on Hillary's side. But after sitting through Hillary's America I am no more supportive of Hillary than I was before, but I am also no where near convinced that I should be supportive of the GOP.
For those who aren't familiar with Mr. D'Souza's work, he has written and directed such films as America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014) and his biggest "hit", 2016: Obama's America (2012), which garnered an astonishing $33,349,949 during it's time in theaters, making it one of the highest grossing conservative films of all time. These films were created for a very specific audience, so of course said audiences ate these films up, but the same can be said for documentaries such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Blackfish; both of which were huge hits with a more liberal audience. However, even some of the best documentaries are pretty biased toward the position the creators of the film take toward the topic they are talking about in the film but they present their argument for their position, generally, through the use of statistics, well-documented and sited quotes, and facts. Not all documentaries do so, and this is one such 'documentary.' I also use the term documentary loosely as this film was made up of wooden reenactments versus doing much else..
The film starts out with showing Mr. D'souza receiving his sentencing from a judge after he had been found guilty of violating campaign finance laws. Of course, he blames Obama for his sentence, as he had just created 2016: Obama's America before he was tried and found guilty. So the judge sentences Dinesh (being played by himself) to spend time in a halfway house, be
on probation, and have to go to mandatory psychological evaluations during that time. While he's at the halfway house, he makes friends with the criminals including a man named Roc who was thrown into jail because he started a life insurance scam where a few of his cronies would go out on the street, offer people life insurance policies with no down payments and a check for $5,000 just for signing up, and then a few days later go and kill them to collect the money. Of course, this Roc fellow isn't a real person- I mean, he could be, but Dinesh never clarifies if the character of Roc is being used to protect the name of someone who didn't want to be mentioned in the film or what. So for all I know, he's not a real guy. Anyway, so after talking about the finer points of con artistry with Roc, Dinesh starts to put together this idea that the Democratic party is part of the biggest con in history, and is wanting to steal America.
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| Dinesh D'souza is living the thug life in a halfway house [Found on Google Images] |
Dinesh visits some Democratic history museum and manages to sneak into a room for "Employees only" and uncovers the truth about how the Democratic party was started. And here we learn that when the Democratic party first created it was lead by Andrew Jackson who was pro-slavery and drove Native Americans from their homelands to reservations, that the founder of the KKK was a member of the Democratic party as well as a lot of racists who supported the same ideology, Woodrow Wilson who was pro-segregation,
and even brought up that Margaret Sanger, a Democrat and founder of Planned Parenthood, supported eugenics as a means to cleanse the country of racial impurity.
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| A KKK clansman leaps off the screen during the White House's screening of Birth of a Nation. You know, cuz stuff like that happens all the time. [Found on Google Images] |
All of these factors, to some extent or another, are true and many of today's Democrats don't argue that, as all of those things are historically valid. But the problem is D'souza seems to forget that both the Democratic and the Republican parties have changed drastically over the past 100 or so years. He does mention "The Big Switch" that took place when Democrats and Republicans switched their party platforms, but only once and without much explanation, which if you want to know more about this important historical tid-bit, you're SOL; you'll be needing to hit up Google to get some answers.
D'souza touts the glory of the Republican party by focusing on President Lincoln, who was the first Republican to be elected to the presidency and all the good that he did in regards to the Emancipation Proclamation, but that's really the only Republican president he focuses on. He briefly mentions Reagan during the course of the film, but he never delves into his politics or platform as a president. Also, while the film is called Hillary's America, he does a poor job of showing what that America would look like, as he waits until the final 20 minutes of the movie to start talking about it. He finds his way to Hillary's campaign headquarters, and again lets himself into an "Employees Only" room where he is met with reenactments of Hillary as a young woman, and how dastardly and power hungry she is by nature, as he seems to heavily imply. From there, we are met with footage of victims of Bill Clinton's sexual scandals and Hillary's defense of her husband. This information translates into Hillary and Bill being a political "Bonnie and Clyde" who want to bend America to their will for profit. While I do accept that Bill Clinton has a pretty nasty history when it comes to sex scandals, let's not forget that the current Republican nominee has his own list of mysogeny and sexual assault against women, but D'souza never touches on that, of course.
The film then wraps up with Dinesh telling the audience that while he can't vote thanks to his conviction, he hopes the audience will go out and make the right choice. He walks off screen and the audience is met with a full scale band, an adorable girl-child in a white dress, and a large choir performing "The Star Spangled Banner" accompanied by stock footage of cowboys, children running with American flags, The Blue Angels, cannon fire, fireworks, mountain ranges and everything else that screams Americana for the last 3 minutes of the film.
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| Margaret Sanger hangin' with the Clan and talking about eugenics. [Found on Google Images] |
Honestly, thanks to poor editing, ridiculous moments of acting, and a lack of a solid argument as to why Clinton would be a bad candidate, this film is nothing but conspiracy-theorist garbage. While there could be a solid argument as to why Hillary would be a bad option for President and why she could clearly be considered a criminal, D'souza never provides any hard evidence to sway his audience, but rather just plays news footage and audio recordings that the Fox News crowd has seen and posted on Facebook at least a million times by now.
While a lot of people are really fired up over this election, myself included, Hillary's America follows the same formula for bullshit that the rest of Dinesh's films follow; surprise, surprise. If you are the type of person who just can't stand Hillary no matter what the reason, you may enjoy this movie. But for anyone looking for a logical argument based on current and relevant facts to help form an educated opinion of who you should consider for president- do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.
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