Melania, Brett Ratner’s Melania Trump movie, is a purportedly serious film that plays like a mockumentary. If you were making a movie that parodied the current first lady of the United States, I’m not sure what you’d do differently.
This interminable, nearly two-hour-long film features a running voice-over by Melania, taking us through crucial moments in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration: choosing fabric for her coat, making sure her dress is the right length, approving a design plan for the dinner, and perusing furniture for Barron’s future bedroom. (Sadly, we never get to see which chest of drawers she picks.) “My creative vision is always clear,” she intones, returning to that notion throughout.
This is a work of propaganda, but director Brett Ratner is no Leni Riefenstahl. Missing are the German filmmaker’s awe-inspiring visuals and hypnotic edits; instead, Ratner substitutes endless shots of the gaudy, excessive Trump aesthetic as Melania floats through Trump Tower, private jets, motorcades, and gala dinners until she lands at the White House. The doc’s opening shot is a panorama of Mar-a-Lago in all its gilded glory, accompanied by the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away,” Mick Jagger’s voice promises.
Before he was exiled from Hollywood by sexual misconduct accusations (he has denied the claims), Ratner was best known for directing the Rush Hour movies—so I at least expected propulsive pacing and drama. No such luck: We might as well be watching gold paint dry.
It’s hard to tell whether Melania herself finds it all as dull as I did: She remains inscrutable through most of the film, her face frozen into an elegant mask. The only times she genuinely lights up are when Ratner coaxes her to sing along to her favorite song, Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” and when she later dances to the Village People’s “YMCA” at an inaugural event. At several points Melania refers to the death of her mother with sadness, and even has the cameras trail her to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where she lights candles. But throughout, there is no perceptible change in her demeanor.
That departure could’ve been a great segue into a segment about Melania’s past—her childhood in Slovenia, her modeling career, background information that might give context to her transformation into Donald Trump’s consort. But the doc instead sticks with the minutiae of the march toward Trump’s second term. Unmentioned is the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol; instead, the camera just pans over images of inauguration preparation at the Capitol—now a symbol of Trump’s triumphal power.
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