The Brink (2019)

The Brink review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Among the odd circle that President Donald Trump had formed in his administration, Steve Bannon is perhaps the oddest. He was a grifter who aped off the nationalistic success of Trump’s reign that got him to the White House and for a time considered himself a successful instigator. He was the co-founder of Breitbart News, a far-right organization that aimed to stoke nationalistic views in the heated virgin gamer crowd that were easy to play. The audience then expanded to Republicans when the Overton window shifted and saying even louder and nastier rhetoric without dog whistles was even easier to wield. So...how did he fail so badly as one of the first casualties of Trump’s dwindling circle?

The Brink is a documentary that attempts to answer that question and it becomes pretty clear how. Bannon truly believes in his far-right politics and is willing to go further than the Republicans ever will be even nastier on immigration and nationalism. He wanted to go even further by forming a new party and continued to spout with the bullhorn of radio to play up to the angered conservatives, serving up the gruel they so desperately wanted and trying to deliver more results. However, Trump soon dumped Bannon from his administration after a successful campaign and, as with a lot of kicked-out Trump people, was given the name Sloppy Steve by the President.

After being kicked out of the White House, Bannon stuck to his far-right beliefs and continued doing what he did best: being obnoxious at rallies and backing politicians. He had hopes that Roy Moore would be a solid bet to re-elect as the Senator of Alabama. Unfortunately for Steve, Roy had a scandalous case of sexually harassing underage girls and, even with the Republican Overton window for good taste has shifted so low, Moore would lose his seat to Democrat Doug Jones. Losing a Republican seat in Alabama of all places is a huge embarrassment and part of that blame has to be laid on the backing by Bannon.

The documentary covers all of this from Bannon’s perspective and you can see how much worry and regret slowly washes over him as time passes. Though he ventures all around the world to support national populist conservative political movements, very little comes of it. Given that this documentary came out in 2019, there’s this eerie staging as though Bannon may be on his way to rising more on the international stage. After all, Hungary is getting more far-right in their policies and a lot of agitated Germans and Italians seem as though they’re kinda longing for a fascist state where they can be more openly hostile to gays, refugees, and basically anyone who isn’t deemed “normal” or “them.”

The truth is that Bannon’s legacy only became worse over time. His career in politics really hit the fan when in August of 2020 he was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection to the We Build the Wall campaign. This would news would only be surprising to anyone not paying attention, since even more grifter news came about after Trump lost the election and tried to scam even more money out of supporters. The only way Bannon got let off the hook was due to a Presidential pardon. Still, Steve’s legacy is a joke, having recently been banned from Twitter for calling for the deaths of disease expert Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray. He will eventually fade away like the pathetic far-right grifter who was not successful enough to get behind and not loud enough to attract the more reactive crowd.

So the question then lingers of what good this documentary will do. It mostly just gives air to portraying Bannon as a person and not some secret genius grifting behind the scene. He really is as bad in person as he believes reflects in the media spaces he occupies. In one way, this humanizing could make Bannon seem less imposing as more of a pathetic huckster than some new wave of politics. In another light, however, it may make him seem deserving of remorse. He is not and it really can’t be overstated how much that needs to be kept in mind when watching him spin his way into working for a crowd. At one point, Bannon appears at a debate where the crowd boos him. He found himself only slightly shaken that a crowd who were not overreacting liberals intelligently booed his nationalistic talking points. Bannon’s publicist ensured him that the exposure of trying to remain calm among criticism was a good image. He’d probably say the same of this film as well.