Melania (Ratner, 2026)

"We're all very grateful."

Brett Ratner’s Melania was hatched in the waning days of 2024 from a corporate frenzy in Hollywood and Silicon Valley to curry favour with the incoming Trump administration. The candidates competing to produce a flattering portrait of Melania Trump included Disney (which donated $15 million to Donald Trump’s future presidential library) and Paramount (which was seeking FCC approval for its merger with Skydance), but ultimately it was Amazon that would enjoy the privilege of paying a $40 million licensing fee. $28 million of that went directly to the incoming First Lady, which was apparently not illegal because, as a former acting director of the U.S. office of government ethics explained to Rolling Stone, “The First Lady is, for ethical purposes, considered to be a private citizen.” It’s reasoning like this that sometimes makes me wonder why the United States still bothers having laws. The resulting film, released to theatres a year and 10 days after Trump’s second inauguration, is repugnant and boring, which did not surprise me, although the specific texture of its repugnance and boredom did. Shot in scope by Ratner’s regular cinematographer Dante Spinotti (whose credits include Heat and L.A. Confidential), this is a burnished, self-consciously cinematic-looking product that makes little effort to appear candid.

The tone is set with an early scene where Melania meets with team of stylists at Trump Tower to discuss her wardrobe for Inauguration Day. We get a long, boring, and very stilted conversation about hats and shoes, which Ratner and Spinotti shoot like a perfume commercial. Eventually we learn that today is the eighth anniversary of the first time Melania and her lead stylist worked together, which starts Melania on a soliloquy about the importance of relationships and anniversaries. Most of Melania’s interactions are with employees, subordinates, and people who act like employees and subordinates—up to and including the priests at St. Michael’s Cathedral, who are disappointingly obsequious for alleged Men of God. If consulted, I might have advised Ratner to find a longtime friend of Melania’s (the Queen of Jordan doesn’t count) who could have spoken with warmth and texture about her personality and character. As it stands, Melania is a stressful viewing experience because it carries the ambient sense that at any moment, someone—maybe even you, the viewer—could be fired.

Since this movie doesn’t pretend to be anything other than the Official Story, what do we learn about how Melania Trump sees herself? One of my takeaways is that she would probably rather be a lib. In her narration, she talks about unifying the country and her immigrant background and protecting our freedoms, which is all pretty rich a year later. We hear about her charitable initiatives, one focused on access to education for foster children, another having something to do with limiting screen-time for children, or maybe it’s about cyberbullying, or maybe it’s about mental health. Whatever it is, it puts her on a long Zoom call with Brigitte Macron, who is also apparently passionate about these issues. As far as Melania’s day-to-day life, we learn that it involves a lot of walking through hallways. Frequently the hallways lead her to a car, which drives her to an airport, where she boards a plane and flies to another hallway. Sometimes the hallways lead her to rooms where she has brief, awkward meetings, including a cringe-inducing encounter with a former Israeli hostage who she comforts with all the grace of a Teddy Ruxpin doll.

The 45th/47th president appears only fleetingly in the first half, but hits like a silver bullet whenever he does. We first hear his voice on a call to his wife, crowing about the size of his electoral victory and the popular vote share and the electoral college win and… and … (her bored muttering of “Yep… that was a big one…” is a rare moment of unvarnished authenticity). Later, there’s an even better scene with the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago consulting with a couple of henchmen about the inauguration. Trump complains that the College Football Playoff National Championship falls on the same day (“They probably did it on purpose”) and asks how many people are expected to come and how soon he can get started Making America Great Again. “We’re all very grateful,” says one of the helpers, in a tone that is anything but triumphant.

Most of the second half is spent on Inauguration Day, which really does last all day. Comparisons to Triumph of the Will are obvious and maybe even a little cheap, but something the two films have in common is their monotony. Good lord, another ballroom? A highlight of this section is a brief shot of the Trumps bobbing happily to “YMCA,” which is evidence that their relationship may not be purely transactional and that they do bond over certain things, such as their bad taste in culture and home decor. Finally, Ratner follows the First Couple to their living quarters, cooing “I can’t believe we’re at the White House!” and “Sweet dreams, Mister President!” from behind the camera like the little worm that he is.

As a filmmaker, Ratner is no Leni Riefenstahl, but every now and then his camera captures something interesting, like an incredible shot of Biden and Kamala Harris standing around the Capitol on Inauguration Day looking pissed. Because Ratner is not a journalist and isn’t following the same script and protocols of the press corps, he’s sometimes in a position to reveal the contrived, mechanical nature of these sacred traditions. I have been savouring in my memory a brief moment with the Trumps and the Bidens tensely standing together while some aide runs through the protocol for boarding Marine One. There’s also the pre-inauguration dinner that Spinotti shoots like the lizard scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where we see J.D. Vance and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and a thousand other ghouls eating out of what probably aren’t Fabergé eggs but certainly look like them. Washington D.C. is a perfect city for the Trumps—a tacky theme-park version of itself, proudly enforcing these corny rituals. How clarifying to watch this awful couple the same week their awful country with 250 whole years of history flattens Beirut into paste and rains oil down on Tehran.