God & Country (2024)

God-&-Country-(2024)
God & Country (2024)

“God & Country” is an example of that age-old problem that quite a fair number of political documentaries with a cautionary alarmist approach have. While there is validity in its criticism, that kind of a project is more likely to be a turn-off than a turn-on, with those who would have been likely to comply with its argument feeling as though their worldview has been validated and that the audience who needs to watch it the most, will not be able to see it or regard it as propaganda. I don’t know what the solution is in this case if there is anyone could argue that the fuel for a film of this nature is somewhat designed to bring troops for the war that is yet to take place.

Such religion-oriented vocabulary in the last sentence is employed for a purpose.

The film “God & Country”, written and directed by Rob Reiner and Dan Partland respectively, focuses on the surge of Christian beliefs within the United States political framework attributed to America’s evangelical Christians. Partland considers his documentary to be a politically charged project, and so does his work on diagnosing the former President. This time, it was narcissistic personality disorder, and being unfit for office was the conclusion of the ‘documentary’. “God & Country the movie tells the story of ignorance of today’s society, which depends entirely on its electoral system. There is no doubt that the past views of history seem crazy today. A small perspective evolves into a big picture as we learn about the society of Christian evangelism and one among them who believes prophecy in saving faith is the only way to salvation.

One expert notes, that in America a driven minority has the chance to hold the reins of the local, regional, or national government since the electorate is famous for its non-participation even when there are high stakes involved. This is the danger, and one can witness it in the phenomenon of book censorship in local and school libraries in response to people turning up at school board meetings who do not even have children in the district and are frequently from out of the state. The documentary also helps us understand that while Americans who form the reactionary right of the political spectrum are vocal, they are not as many as they are made out to be. The figure is actually about one in three registered voters (well below the imaginary “half” claimed by people who say that some entertainer holding radical views is turning away “half the country”). However, these are the people who, when it comes to voting, turn out in much larger numbers than, for example, Americans aged less than thirty who consider themselves left and who are very active in making voices on the Internet, but hardly show up on the election day in a way that is meaningful enough for the establishment to even listen to their opinion.

Christian Nationalists, as the film suggests, are engaged in political restructuring through obstructionism, gerrymandering, and the advocacy for friendly federal judges to enable them to dominate the politics of America permanently. Rick Wiles, the pastor and founder of a website called TruNews which “covers and comments on global events and trends with a conservative, orthodox Christian worldview,” is among these nationalists who proudly declared: “We are going to impose Christian rule in this country!” A New York Times columnist, David French, takes this cause to be one that practices “malice and cruelty and division and partisanship,” while a minister in the congregationalist tradition, Bishop William J. Barber III, says that the movement worships wealth and guns, and is fixated on what God ‘says little about’ but is ‘so quiet about’ what God says we are to do, which is to end poverty and therefore ‘care for the least of thee.’

This film’s best moments come off as more of a history lesson. For instance, one section that seeks to refute the idea of the United States being “a Christian nation” was able to do so fairly well by stating how absolute the government was never to the concepts of The Ten Commandments, how George Washington did not kneel down and pray in the snow at Valley Forge, how the concept of prayer being enforced in schools was brought to the country during the Red Scare of the 1950s, how the Bible does not even address the issue of abortion, how the slogan “In God We Trust” first appeared on the coins of the USA in the year 1864, and how it was only during the 1980s that the Evangelical Christian base began rising as a political force in America, primarily in reaction to the court-ordered desegregation of public schools in the 1960s and 1970s.

The reality though, is that there is not much interest here that one cannot get by diving into Wikipedia, or ‘The Daily Show’ or ‘Last Week Tonight’ or even Rachel Maddow. Indeed, the quotes are picked with a view to derive maximum impacts and motives on social media. Perhaps the most controversial quote is that of Greg Locke, pastor of Global Vision Bible Church, who screams to his listeners: “There are Democrats in this church who can’t come! You can leave, you demon! Don’t you dare come in here, you whore who has other women’s children for presidents!”

Along with a series of images comes a stream of talking head interviews and the combined product is probably something like 180 different Political Action Committee thirty-second ads, each one coming after another.

The soundtrack puts forth persistent and creepy/suspicious, worrisome music that says something like, “Terrorists have planted bombs, will our heroes be able to find and defuse them in time?,” though there are some warmer, quieter moments featuring the acoustic guitar and pizzicato strings (of course only when the bad guys are bare on screen). I really can’t picture anything in it that could mute or otherwise counterbalance all that diet that one would get from the likes of Fox News Channel, OANN, Alex Jones, or any one of the numerous local big city drive-time DJs who tell their listeners that America is being flooded with an army of rapists, terrorists and thieves from the South.

The Other Side, if one can call it that, makes films like this, in this case, looking the other way. The cutting is extremely quick and keeps the audience on the edge. Perhaps I am just old-fashioned regarding the kind of documentaries that would have quickly brought a camera right inside one of the churches which are briefly referred to in this film and allow the churchgoers and clergy to address the screen and each other and provide us with the context including their culture and belief systems that engendered them as well as what threat they pose to democracy.

But maybe I am just learning for the classic “American documentary” like that of the mid-20th century, where the aim was to actually document and there were chances that astounding or eccentric details might be, well here and about: dabs of color barring black and white interpretations.

This film is accomplishing what other media, and other approaches can attempt. I am almost in total concord with its position, but I would still rather have viewed for instance those uncomfortable, politically and morally treacherous right-wing spy thrillers, actioners by the likes of Mel Gibson or S. Craig Zahler again, or one of his social realism dramatic works by Spike Lee or Ken Loach whose principles are not very different from mine, because then I would bear witness to some classical aesthetics.

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