This French-produced and directed investigative documentary wastes no time in getting to its point: despite President Trump’s self-congratulatory remarks that there’s no better time to pursue the American Dream, director Sebastien Gilles’s probing eye is more concerned with the 40 million people in the world’s richest country who are living the American nightmare. Gilles’s documentary focuses on the land of liberty’s ugly underbelly, looking at not only the social stigmas that keep the chronic poor down but also the legal system that increasingly, in many subtle and unsubtle ways, is de facto criminalizing poverty.
In his quest to expose those who’ve been left behind by Trump’s America, Gilles criss-crosses the country to find living proof for his thesis that Trump’s economy isn’t working for a shockingly large portion of Americans. In San Diego, for instance, he finds a city where, like in Los Angeles, rents have risen exponentially while wages have stagnated. As a result you get members of the working homeless like 54-year-old Maria, who as we learn in the film holds down a full-time job as a carer but can’t afford her own apartment, so she sleeps in her car.
Gilles pays a particularly eye-opening visit to Appalachia, traditionally a place of systemic poverty and unemployment, has gotten even worse under Trump. Despite their already meager social benefits being further cut by the Trump administration, they are almost all ardent Trump supporters, backing a greedy anti-welfare billionaire robber baron while depending on free local charity-organized healthcare for their dentistry and medical needs. Out in LA, beyond the glitz and glam, Mohawked punk/good Samaritan builds small cabins for the homeless to try and bring some relief to a Tinseltown homeless population that has skyrocketed in the last few years. This is a no-nonsense filigree-free look at the destructive effects of decades of unfettered disaster capitalism in America. Aud: C. P. Highly Recommended.
Included in our list of Best Documentaries 2021.
