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PORTSIDE CULTURE

REAGAN’S UGLY HAGIOGRAPHY IS MIDDLE-OF-THE-NIGHT HISTORY CHANNEL
NONSENSE  
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Alex Lei
August 30, 2024
AV Club [[link removed]]

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_ The greatest sin of Reagan is not its (expectedly) warped
worldview, but its total lack of drama. _

, Photo: Rawhide Releasing

 

One of the most subtle moments in _Reagan_, the biopic starring
Dennis Quaid as the 40th President of the United States, comes at the
first inauguration sequence, with a close-up of Ronald Reagan’s hand
on an open Bible, revealing a margin note in 2 Chronicles: “A
wonderful verse for the healing of a nation.” 

Real Reagan-heads will know that this is the King James that
Ronald’s mother, Nelle, annotated and passed down to her son, which
he was sworn in on at both of his inaugurations in 1981 and 1985.
Reagan kept it open to that verse, which reads: “If my people, which
are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my
face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven .
. . and will heal their land.” This passage, in reference to King
Solomon—whom Christ himself extolled as a wise king—adds to the
sibylline nature of Ronald Reagan’s presidency that _Reagan_ seeks
to convey. The verse in his mother’s Bible, along with a
preacher’s prophecy earlier in the film about Reagan’s path to the
White House (which, in the moment, spooks the future president), and
the deeds we will see him commit to end the Cold War argue that Reagan
the man, the human, the mortal was also Reagan the Heavenly God
brought to Earth. It is sure to resonate with the target audience of a
film penned by the writer of a _God’s Not Dead_ sequel and
produced by journeymen EPs of the Pure Flix and Hard Faith
christofascist content creation world (and yes, Kevin Sorbo makes an
appearance). 

The greatest sin of _Reagan_, though, is not its warped worldview,
which is to be expected, but that for a movie about a man who puts
himself at the center of a world apparently on the brink of
annihilation, _Reagan_ lacks any drama at all. 

The whole film is framed as the memories of an ex-KGB agent played by
Jon Voight, Viktor Petrovich (who I have to imagine is a completely
fictional character because 1) Petrovich is not a surname but a
patronym, and 2) TMDB and Letterboxd miscredit the character as
“Viktor Novikov,” a villain in the 2016 _Hitman_ video game).
Petrovich recounts to a young up-and-comer in Russian politics his
observations on Reagan, since the would-be president was but a young
Hollywood aspirant. 

This creates an atemporal structure, constantly passing between past
and present, and multiple subjectivities, seemingly from Petrovich’s
and Reagan’s perspectives individually and simultaneously, not
dissimilar to last year’s _Oppenheimer_
[[link removed]].
Indeed, the Voight scenes seem to serve a similar initial purpose to
the expositing done by Robert Downey Jr. in that blockbuster.
Perhaps _Reagan _is offering itself as a conservative counter.
(Although _Oppenheimer_ features many communists surrounding its
protagonist, it would be hard to describe that film as anything but
politically ambivalent, even though some have read it as anti-cancel
culture.) In an early sequence laying out the KGB’s plot to tear
America apart from the inside is a series of photos of their-would be
agents; the camera pans down to a picture of J. Robert Oppenheimer and
his nuclear “gadget,” and then cuts to a Soviet officer holding a
picture of the Hollywood sign. The Soviets have infiltrated the
academic elite _and_ mainstream media, and they’re using it to
destroy America! At least, that is how these details should be read,
because that is how they are given to us. 

Faces, figures, and important dates and times parade across the
135-minute runtime of _Reagan_, presented with importance in image
yet weightlessness in effect—I could sit here and explain the
narrative purpose of Reagan making a fool of soon-to-be-blacklisted
screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Sean Hankinson) or his battle with union
agitator Herb Sorrell (Mark Kubr), whom the film accuses of being a
Soviet agent trying to build one-big-union in Hollywood à la the IWW
(this particular thread even implies that Sorrell and the AFL-CIO had
something to do with John Hinkley’s assassination attempt on Reagan,
although the film, of course, never seems to mention that Hinkley was
indeed just a lone kook). 

They’re all pieces to a middle-of-the-night-History-Channel
conspiracy, but it doesn’t build much of a movie, especially one
trying to justify two hours where, presumably, there would be room for
some dramatic movement rather than just hammering in point after point
like it’s a high school essay. It moves forward, but without
questions; the most “tense” sequence is a will-he-won’t-he
moment where people anticipate if Reagan will really tell Mr.
Gorbachev “Tear down this wall!” But of course he will. Even those
not studied in Reaganography would know that, and they would know that
it serves little consequence regardless. Even _Reagan_ acknowledges
this—it cuts to “Two Years Later” when the Berlin Wall comes
down, but doesn’t mention that the collapse was due to a
miscommunication with border guards rather than Reagan’s words. 

_Reagan_ would have us believe these words matter, that what he says
on TV can change the world. Maybe as president his acting can have the
effect that his Hollywood career never had. He seems on the edge of
losing re-election, but one good quip on the debate stage brings him
back for a clean sweep. In _Reagan_, the Soviet politburo cowers as
they watch the President of the United States give a broadcast speech,
and Gorbachev (Olek Krupa) is eating out of the palm of Reagan’s
hand after being alone in a room with him (this particular scene
actually reminded me of the Yalta Conference sequence in the Soviet
film
[[link removed]] _The
Fall Of Berlin_, wherein Winston Churchill and FDR make a toast to
Stalin’s greatness). _Reagan _is a movie where facts and logic
win, where oration is power, where a good diss can win an argument.
The movie lionizes the type of “debate” that popular conservative
pundits have been obsessed with in recent years—not just through
dialogue, but through the film’s structure, which acts as this type
of rhetoric: here are my particular facts, and they support my
particular argument, which backs up the way I already feel. Naturally,
this is a presentation of some facts over others.

In _Reagan_, Ronald’s marriage to Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) is
merely a means of emasculation where he watches her stardom take off
while he’s left with supporting roles and domestic duties. She
leaves the film forever once he meets Nancy (Penelope Ann Miller) and
finds new importance in the power bestowed to him as SAG president.
Reagan is shown to be ambivalent about the House of Un-American
Activities Committee, seeing communism as a malignant force but also
believing that it should be bested by democracy rather than the
authority of the state. 

In real life, Reagan’s testifying as a “friendly witness” before
HUAC was a strain on his and Wyman’s marriage to the point of
divorce. And of course Wyman’s story with Reagan doesn’t end
there. Wyman was close with her _Magnificent Obsession_ and _All
That Heaven Allows_ co-star, Rock Hudson, who was publicly pulled out
of the closet when he died of AIDS in 1985. Hudson’s death punched
the AIDS epidemic, during which Reagan was personally culpable for
hundreds of thousands of deaths by purposely ignoring the crisis, even
further into the national spotlight. (Not to mention, Nancy
Reagan personally
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Hudson from getting experimental AIDS treatment.) In a film chock-full
of information, one that purports or perhaps—generously—aspires to
deliberating fairly on history, the information
that _Reagan_ intentionally omits becomes that much more egregious.
That is because _Reagan_’s deliberation is actually obfuscation,
meant to create a fake discourse on the president focusing only on
what can easily be defended, rather than address any of the real, hard
criticisms that were laid against him. 

It seems obvious to target this kind of film based on ideological
content or goals, especially considering the audience it is trying to
reach is one already aligned with the film. By the end of it, the
characters are assuring Reagan that he did the best he could, and
telling the audience “Hey, Iran-Contra was messed up, but maybe
Reagan didn’t really know about it, and also the Contras were
freedom fighters like George Washington!” It’s enough
contradictory bullshit that you could cover all of Rancho del Cielo. 

This is all more about what _Reagan_ does rather than
what _Reagan_ is, meaning what is actually on the screen. And that
is because what is on the screen is quite ugly—it is abject. Dennis
Quaid crafts his performance through uncanny makeup, what looks like
digital de-aging, a terrifying vocal impression, and a pained immobile
smile. _Reagan_ tells us it is the story of a gentle redeemer of a
country, and presents us with a gruesome caricature that even
Reagan’s worst enemies would willingly render. 

I could fill pages full recounting the movie’s ugliness, with
Christian Sebaldt’s waxy digital cinematography rendering cheap
soundstages—built in the halls of a Masonic Lodge in Oklahoma (you
read that right)—as impressions of the backrooms where the fate of
the Cold War was decided. Hell, I haven’t even mentioned that Scott
Stapp plays Frank Sinatra (and does almost disappear into his cameo,
with just a touch of a Creed-y twang sneaking through), or that Bob
Dylan recorded a cover of Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In”
which plays over the credits as a picture montage of the real man
takes us home (possibly the best moment of the film, and one that will
likely only be appreciated by fans of Dylan’s recent project
covering pieces from the Great American Songbook). 

Perhaps that is the saving grace for a film otherwise buried so deeply
in its psychosis that it can’t see that the man they are selling as
the Christ figure of American politics moves and talks like a Madame
Tussauds figure come to life. Beneath _Reagan_’s incoherence, under
all that weirdness, inside the nonsensical, cherry-picked, worldview
that is so fun to poke apart, is ultimately something I was running
from by trying to keep my mind moving for the duration of the film’s
runtime: Anything was better than simply sitting with how ugly and
boring the movie really is. 

DIRECTOR: Sean McNamara
WRITERS: Howard Klausner
STARRING: Dennis Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller, Robert Davi, Lesley-Anne
Down, Jon Voight
RELEASE DATE: August 30, 2024

* Ronald Reagan
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* biopics
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* U.S. conservative politics
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