In a new documentary, The Brink , premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist for the Trump White House says even though he hated every minute he worked there, he believes he was doing “the Lord’s work.”
USA Today reports that Alison Klayman, the director of The Brink, took what she calls a “fly on the wall approach” to Bannon, catching “unguarded” moments at home and on the road in the United States and Europe on various speaking engagements.
Early on in the documentary, Bannon, always a controversial figure, praises the architectural achievements of the Auschwitz concentration camp and defends his time in the Trump White House.
“There’s no glamour to the job. I hated every second I was there. The West Wing has bad karma to it. They say, ‘Because you were doing bad stuff!’ But I was doing the Lord’s work.”
John DeFore of the Hollywood Reporter screened and reviewed the Bannon documentary and believes that Bannon has bought into his own press as “the villain” and believes that the media is still obsessed with him. But DeFore says this is all unfounded as Bannon’s message is stale.
“This Bannon is a snooze, occasionally making a wry aside but nearly never saying anything unusually smart or new.”
#Sundance review: Steve Bannon doc ‘The Brink’ https://t.co/C8idbHKL1y pic.twitter.com/LF59cnwOoK
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 29, 2019
He adds that Bannon in the flesh and on film has far less of a punch than the articles about him during his time in the White House, which portrayed him as a supposed evil genius behind the president which included press photos that were more interesting when “captured, Sasquatch-like, in one of those rumpled-wino photographs.”
The documentary also talks about Bannon’s struggle to lose weight, showing him juicing and sharing his love of kombucha as he goes on the road seeming committed to sharing his message and carefully avoiding pressure to throw Donald Trump under the bus.
The Daily Beast says that Bannon still believes he learned a lot from Trump the man during his short tenure in the White House and on the campaign trail. He says that the president taught him that there is really no such thing as bad press.
Bannon believes that 30 years from now, Trump will be part of everyone’s personal life, like it or not, and he believes that Trump’s messages will have a lasting effect on our culture.
“Donald Trump is a historical figure and a transformative president.”
