Denis O’Neill: ‘Melania,’ the ‘documentary,’ is cinematic sleaze worthy of Trump’s squalor
It’s exciting for me to know that the American president historians have ranked as the absolute worst can now add his first lady to that singular honor. With the release of Melania, the former Eurotrash party girl has leaped to the bottom of the First Lady Barrel, a perfect match for her bottom-of-the-barrel husband.
It is heartwarming that they met on Epstein Island. It was grifter love at first sight. He hadn’t become a convicted pervert in the State of New York at that point, but his pedophile instincts in Florida were no doubt known to Melania, and money and power to many has a romantic glow of their own.
And who wouldn’t want JePrey Epstein to be their cupid?
Just to get you up to speed on a few reviews of the documentary, The Hollywood Reporter called it “Two hours of endless hell.” The Atlantic described it as “A Horror Movie.” Maureen Dowd, in the NYT, said, “Some theaters showing Melania were so empty that wags suggested that undocumented Immigrants should hide out there.”
The Guardian described the movie this way (under the headline, “Trump film is a gilded trash remake of the Zone of Interest’’:
“...No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It is one of those rare unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. I’m not sure it even qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and … like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.”
Reviewers weren’t the only ones appalled by the on-screen dumpster fire. Rolling Stone reported that two thirds of the New York film crew asked not to be credited. In Australia, a country of 40 million people, reportedly one ticket was sold.
Knowing that humiliation is the Achilles tendon of the presidential criminal as much as praise is the balm, the universal mockery of the documentary cannot be enjoyed deeply enough.
Nor more richly deserved. I don’t know which country he will decide to bomb to decoy attention away from this social-media catastrophe, but the world’s ever deepening loathing for Donald Trump can only help peel away a few more inexplicable Trump admirers.
For the record, Melania’s first efforts as First Lady included paving over Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden. When I think of how many gracious and interesting First Ladies America has had in recent decades, and their admirable causes... from Jackie O (historic preservation) to Lady Bird Johnson (conservation) and Barbara Bush (family literacy), from Rosalynn Carter (mental-health advocacy) and Laura Bush (education, literacy and youth development) to Michelle Obama (reducing youth obesity) and Jill Biden (supporting military families)... the cementing of Melania Trump’s status as the worst of all time — a match for the fat felon she at least tries to avoid as often as possible – only makes the reaction to this spectacle all the more satisfying.
Denis O’Neill is a screenwriter, memoirist and the author of Whiplash.