The four years of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, beginning with mass protests at one end of the political spectrum and ending with riots at the other, piled up a substantial chapter in American history, with or without the possibility of a repeat. Halfway through his turbulent second term, few will look back with nostalgia, but others may marvel at how dramatically the tone and direction of American political life has changed over the past decade. Stephen Mayne and Eric Daniel Metzger’s archival documentary The Great Experiment captures a country in uncertainty and ongoing transition, looking back with pensive distance at how Americans lived at the time, eerily reflecting both what we didn’t know then and what we’ve forgotten.
Shot in black and white in a pristine vérité style, giving these relatively recent images a significant sense of already-made history, the “Great Experiment” was created in 2017 for Americans of various political persuasions from 2017 to 2020. It’s a completely observational feat of documentation, devoid of talking heads or guide narration, and neutrally captured scenes (sometimes mundane, sometimes chaotic) from everyday life for Americans of various political persuasions between 2015 and 2020. A neat rhetorical conclusion. The film, which had an outstanding premiere at last month’s True/False festival before its international release at CPH:DOX, will next be screened at Full Frame docfest. Festival travel, especially across the United States, will be widespread, but the film’s commercial prospects will depend on whether audiences are willing to pick at its unhealed wounds.
The film’s own commentary is limited to thoroughly packed, tongue-in-cheek all-lowercase headlines assigned to each of the four sections: “I’m Sorry, My Love,” “This Is My Home,” “Look Back,” and “Welcome and Thank You,” as well as its own title, which George Washington described as the U.S. government’s “last great experiment in promoting human happiness.” The evidence for human well-being is spotty, but it’s for viewers to assess the state of the experiment under the Trump administration. Every snapshot of Americans spending their leisure time, whether it’s riding a snowmobile, hanging out at a barbershop, or attending a local football game, includes multiple scenes of conflict and anger, sometimes in unexpected formations.
The unnerving opening passage captures a tense exchange between attendees and protesters at a Gays for Trump rally, with one proud supporter ignoring a woman’s disparaging remarks about male privilege. “Thank you, I love you,” his bland, smiling reply is a perfect distillation of the intractable, stubbornly mismatched left-right impasse that has become a staple of the Trump era. It runs through the film’s depictions of gun rights rallies, Civil War reenactments, and “statuary lives matter” demonstrations where conservative ideological fervor feeds every opposition stance. A black man who tore a Confederate flag is greeted with almost gleeful calls for arrest, and black police officers respond in turn.
Elsewhere, depictions of Black Lives Matter rallies further illustrate the critical cacophony of widely divided and bitterly opposed factions, unconsciously united only by an unprecedented sense of mutuality. As we move into the sudden measures of the coronavirus lockdown, the camera captures the eerie sight of New York’s completely deserted sidewalks, a stillness that contrasts strikingly with the cacophony of other sections of the film, but even the film’s empty frames have an air of cacophony that is not serene. Even scenes of relaxed social and domestic activities, such as weddings where guests give a rifle salute in unison, serve as a reminder that there is little in American life that is free from political influence or influence.
“The Great Experiment” unsurprisingly climaxes with startlingly immediate footage of the storming of the Capitol, but as it turns out, it was just an interlude in President Trump’s continued theater. Mayne and Metzger’s camerawork is so perfect throughout that it momentarily succumbs to the disorder of events, but the film’s measured, stepped-back gaze is consistent as the filmmakers scrutinize whether there’s any meaning to this greyscale kaleidoscope of American anxiety, leaving us wondering not what we’ve learned from all this, but what we haven’t learned, and why.
