Films that bring previously obscured truths about the political process to the attention of the public, showing for example how offices of public trust are used for private purposes.
A REPORTER’S CAREER BEGINS IN THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA When Jay Bahadur (played by Evan Peters) wrote a term paper about the peaceful transfer of power in Somalia’s democracy, he was hoping for a career as a writer. But after being turned down by publishers on his first efforts, he unexpectedly ran into a famous journalist, Seymour Tolbin […]
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MAY 1940 IS ENGLAND’S DARKEST HOUR, BUT WAS IT CHURCHILL’S FINEST? Whereas the summertime film Churchill depicts a prime minister ignored by Allied military commander Dwight Eisenhower in 1944, and Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) traces the decade after he was booted from a Cabinet position, Darkest Hour focuses on the days in May 1940 before and after Churchill’s rise to
TOM OF FINLAND SPANS THE ERA FROM HOMOPHOBIA TO ACCEPTANCE The biopic of Touro Laaksonen, known as Tom of Finland (played by Pekka Strang) begins by explaining why the very talented artist, born in a town in Finland during 1920, became the premier gay artist of all time. During the war with the Soviet Union, he
THE DIVINE ORDER REVEALS HOW SWISS TREATED WOMEN BEFORE THEY COULD VOTE Although not intended as a companion of The Breadwinner, the film The Divine Order provides a comparison between how women are badly treated by the Taliban today and Switzerland before 1971. Once again, a distorted interpretation of religion is the basis for mistreatment. The Divine Order is situated in
MARSHALL IS THE MOST ELOQUENT FILM OF THE YEAR From beginning to end, the dialog of Marshall is a filmviewer’s dream—a plot that might seem ordinary becomes poetry of the likes of Langston Hughes (briefly played by Jussie Smollett), a classmate of Thurgood Marshall. The protagonist is a young attorney named Thurgood Marshall (played by Chadwick Boseman), who narrates that
THE FATE OF FJORDS IN THE FUTURE OF NORWAY IN THE KING’S CHOICENorway played a unique role during World War II. Titles at the beginning of the film inform filmviewers that Norway became independent of Sweden in 1905, when King Haakon VII (played by Jesper Christiansen) was imported from Denmark, where his brother was on the
A QUEEN ENJOYS A NEW LIFE IN VICTORIA AND ABDUL In 2003, a chronicle of the role of Abdul Karim in the court of Queen Victoria came to light in Osborne House on the Island of Wight, the queen’s summer home. Shrabani Basu then wrote a book on the relationship, which is adapted to the screen with
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LESSONS OF MARK FELT MAY APPLY TO TRUMPOCRACY Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House explains who was the “Deep Throat” leaking damning information about President Richard Nixon’s role in Watergate to Time magazine and the Washington Post. As third in line to the FBI Director, Mark Felt (played by Liam Neesom) expects to be promoted when J.
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DETROIT REVEALS THE UNREPORTED RIOTERS—THE POLICE Fifteen major cities in the United States experienced riots during the “long hot summer” of 1967. In each case, the police provided the trigger, and the result was a national commission on the causes as well as numerous academic studies to explain who rioted and why. Detroit, directed by Kathryn Bigelow,
13 MINUTES SHOWS WHY HITLER COULD NOT FIND A CONSPIRACY Although the most famous plot to kill Hitler occurred in 1944, involving several military officials, less famous but celebrated in 13 Minutes was Johann Georg Elser (played by Christian Friedel). The film begins with the explosion of a bomb and Elser’s arrest on November 8, 1939. The bomb