A Movie from ‘Foreign Lands’ Donald Trump Should Love

The post A Movie from ‘Foreign Lands’ Donald Trump Should Love appeared first on Den of Geek.

On Sunday evening, U.S. President Donald Trump declared the American movie industry as dying on his Truth Social account and announced that he is beginning the process of implementing what he described as a 100 percent tariff on “any and All movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” In addition to erroneous capitalizations, the president described this as a matter of national security, suggesting that the tax breaks other governments have used to incentivize Hollywood film production outside the U.S. amounted to “a concerted effort by other Nations” to control messaging and create propaganda.

As with so many other polices shaped by late night social media blasts from the commander-in-chief, the specifics and details (and the possible devils within) remain alarmingly vague, beginning of course with whether films themselves can be taxed or if they legally qualify as services or remedies, as asserted by California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday morning. Furthermore, just exactly who would qualify for this tariff—and how it would be applied—is at present a complete mystery.

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Is this a tariff, or tax, on foreign films produced overseas and released at independent cinemas in the U.S.? Or is it meant just for American productions that film overseas, even if they are edited and finished in post-production stateside? Would this apply to Hollywood movies currently already filming at least partially on location overseas? Movies like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Disney and Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday, and Warner Brothers’ Supergirl? Also does this only apply to theatrical releases or to streaming films as well? Because that will be quite the hiccup for the international catalogs of, say, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video after their companies’ CEOs bent the knee and through donation or documentary deals for Melania Trump, gave the president and his organizations tens of millions of dollars in the last six months.

… Also does Trump really want his buddy and Hollywood liaison Mel Gibson to shoot his next Biblical epic, The Resurrection of the Christ, in Georgia or Louisiana right now, even as the film is expected to shortly go before cameras in Rome?

As with so much else about the current American president’s fluctuating whims and declarations, it all seems loose and improvisational, an off-the-cuff solution for what is a genuine problem in the U.S.—in this case the decline of American film production (keep in mind that for over a decade, Marvel shot almost everything in Atlanta until July’s upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps)—that seems designed to cultivate maximum uncertainty and chaos. It is then up to his administration and staff to make sense of it and attempt a plausible rationalization for the day’s destabilizing executive decree.

All of which is to say that it’s a shame Trump seems so suspicious of films shot in foreign lands, because there are many that would appeal to his sensibility and aesthetic after 100 days into his second term. And if I could be so kind as to recommend just one foreign-ish film he ought to give a try, let it be… Fred Zinnemann’s big screen adaptation of A Man for All Seasons from 1966.

Released when Trump was 20 years old, A Man for All Seasons is technically an American film. It was produced and directed by naturalized American citizen Zinnemann and distributed by American studio Columbia Pictures. However, it was based on a 1960 play of the same name by Robert Bolt, an English playwright, and furthermore dealt specifically with the crisis of conscience experienced by 16th century English statesman and social philosopher Sir Thomas More, who much to his later grief was the elevated friend of King Henry VIII, as well as Henry’s Lord High Chancellor when Henry decided he’d rather be married to Anne Boleyn instead of his wife of the past 22 years, Catherine of Aragon.

… So Zinnemann and his studio made the decision to primarily shoot A Man for All Seasons in merry old England instead of a Hollywood backlot in Burbank or Culver City.

But none of that is why I think Trump would get a kick out of the film. Nay, the reason he could appreciate A Man for All Seasons is the kingliness of it all and the film’s depiction of an absolute monarchy bending institutions to its will despite lamentations over ethics or morality from sad sacks like main character Thomas More (played in the film by Paul Schofield, who won an Oscar for the job). Who Trump would adore is Robert Shaw as King Henry VIII.

Decked head to toe in gold regalia—an affectation Trump also shares with plenty of real historical autocrats—this middle-aged Henry is played by Shaw midway between early breakout work in genre fare like From Russia with Love and his most famous role a decade later as Quint in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Yet Henry plays to Shaw’s strengths in speech craft as well as physicality (Shaw was also a playwright). His Henry is a robust and physically domineering presence that through sheer big-kid-bullying energy would dominate the scene even if he wasn’t wearing a proverbial crown.

In his first scene in the movie, Shaw’s English king is depicted as “surprising” Sir Thomas and the chancellor’s family by arriving in a scripted improvisation by royal barge on the river Thames. In that head-to-toe gold, Henry cuts a formidable frame as he gleefully leaps from the landing boat… and discovers his shiny golden shoes have been submerged in unexpected mud.

Every single courtier on his boat enters an awkward deadly silence. Who will be blamed for this embarrassment? Fortunately for the hangers-on, Shaw’s Henry predicts Joe Pesci’s more famous attempts at menacing self-effacement in Goodfellas and just laughs off the mishap. Immediately all of his Yes Men nod their heads and laugh along, each in turn happily diving their feet into the same muddy bank and ruining their shoes just as their king so clearly intended!

This sequence is obviously a metaphor for the real Henry VIII’s entire reign but can be applied to almost any leader with autocratic tendencies. He literally makes a very public and perhaps humiliating misstep, and pretends it was all according to plan. His sycophants and supplicants then pretend right along—even debasing and harming themselves in order to allow their king’s alleged infallibility to continue.

One can see echoes of this in every modern televised Cabinet meeting where a U.S. attorney general might assert her president saved the lives of 75 percent of Americans at the border in the last hundred days and everyone nods along. Or perhaps more crucially for the world, how economic policy is currently bending in the U.S. government to argue that a tariff-led trade war will benefit the American economy in billions, despite the last time the U.S. tried something similar nearly a hundred years ago, it only deepened what is remembered as the Great Depression.

Yet that scene isn’t why Trump would love Henry. It is what comes after as the king approaches his dear, dear friend Sir Thomas More and attempts to cajole, flatter, and finally threaten him into signing off on the king’s attempt to divorce Catherine of Aragon. When asked why he demands More’s approval on the matter, Henry answers, “There are those like Norfolk that follow me because I wear the crown. There are those like Master Cromwell who follow me because they’re jackals with sharp teeth and I’m their tiger. There’s a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves. And then there’s you.”

He craves More’s credibility and authority. He wants to turn a man with principles into another “Yes,” because it would by extension mean the king has principles, yes? Admittedly, Trump is past this point in his political career, but it certainly echoes a first term where men like U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly were raised up to the rank of White House Chief of Staff… only to eventually be divorced from the once and future president with maximum acrimony after failing to bend far enough. (Nowadays Trump refers to Kelly as a “dumb lowlife.”)

Here’s the kicker though: Henry VIII also outlived the doubts and estrangements of men like More. In fact, A Man for All Seasons isn’t just about More’s crisis of conscience, but also how in our earthly, dirty world, morality and doing what is right will not save you. More is ultimately beheaded by Henry for speaking out against his marriage to Anne Boleyn. And if you know your history, Anne also eventually finds her way to the chopping block after displeasing Henry—she is even murdered due to an appalling miscarriage of justice with egregiously trumped up charges of supposed infidelity and incest against her notoriously unfaithful husband.

It’s all hinted at, too, in one of Henry’s big scenes in A Man for All Seasons where Shaw’s smiling camraderie turns vitriolic with the incalcitrant More.

“I don’t take it kindly and I’ll have no opposition,” Henry begins to seethe. “I see how it will be: the bishops will oppose me. The full-fed ‘Princes of the Church,’ hypocrites! All hypocrites! Mind you they don’t take you in, Thomas…. I have no queen! Catherine’s not my wife! No priest can make her so! They who say she is my wife are not only liars but traitors! Yes, TRAITORS! That I will not brook now. Treachery, treachery, treachery!”

And here’s the kicker… Henry didn’t brook what he assumed was treachery in his own life. More died for not recognizing Anne Boleyn as queen. Anne Boleyn died because she failed to produce Henry a son. Another wife was later executed for actually having an extramarital affair (they married when Henry was 49 and Katherine Howard was 16), and Thomas Cromwell, the courtier who most rivaled and plotted against More, also faced a brutal execution in the Tower of London after essentially arranging a bad date for ol’ Henry when he was on wife number four.

None of it mattered in his lifetime. Henry outlived all of his critics and perceived enemies, and died at the age of 55 of natural causes. He lived a life free of consequences—although is perhaps better remembered today because his eventual successor (the daughter he did not want from Boleyn) cleaned up his chaotic reign and ushered in a golden age. So maybe there’s solace in that too.

In other words, A Man for All Seasons is a “foreign land” movie for all Americans when you think about it.

The post A Movie from ‘Foreign Lands’ Donald Trump Should Love appeared first on Den of Geek.