At the beginning of “The Brink,” Stephen K. Bannon appears, as he often does, wearing two shirts and wielding two cellphones. In the course of this fast-moving, tightly packed, at times unnervingly entertaining documentary (directed by Alison Klayman), he wears a number of metaphorical hats, some of which are knocked off his head.
Bannon flies around the United States, meeting with and campaigning for Republican candidates loyal to President Trump, including Roy Moore in Alabama. He flies around Europe, meeting with members of far-right parties, including France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) and the Brothers of Italy. Given his walking papers by the White House in the wake of the murderous Charlottesville, Va., “Unite the Right” rally, Bannon is eventually dumped from Breitbart News and cut loose by prominent financial backers. The New Yorker disinvites him from its festival. None of that seems to faze him much.
A monster to his ideological foes and an occasional embarrassment to his allies, Bannon possesses a curious kind of charisma. “The Brink,” which made its debut at Sundance in January, is the second documentary about him to emerge from the festival circuit in the past year. (The other one, Errol Morris’s “American Dharma,” has yet to secure distribution in the United States.) Bannon likes attention, and journalists and filmmakers like to give it to him.
This is partly because, in spite of his frequent statements of contempt for “lefties,” “the opposition party” and “the fake news” — more or less synonyms in his lexicon — he clearly enjoys the company of these adversaries. He’s always game for a debate or a bull session. The only times he loses his cool are when underlings or colleagues disappoint him.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/movies/the-brink-review.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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