The Amazon-backed "Melania" documentary that has bombed in theaters worldwide actually has an important — however inadvertent — message to reveal about the dark way President Donald Trump's first lady sees America, Inae Oh wrote for Mother Jones in an analysis published on Sunday.
This comes as the director of the movie, Brett Ratner, finds himself appearing in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files, and as reviewers tear the production a new one.
Despite what Oh characterizes as a "slog" of a movie to sit through, "Melania is more revelatory in its world-historical vapidness than it might seem."
"Consider that Melania appears to go out of her way to foreground her journey from Slovenian immigrant to American first lady, a story she says serves as 'a reminder of why I respect this nation so deeply,'" she wrote. "Similarly, the film gives rare space to the immigrants in Melania’s inner circle, including her chief interior designer, Tham Kannalikham, who opens up about her journey from Laos to now decorating the White House, as well as Melania’s father, who is seen beaming with pride in his American daughter. Absent in Viktor Knavs’ film debut is the context of the 'chain migration' pathway through which he and his late wife became US citizens, the very same policy targeted by their son-in-law."
When Melania is quoted in the movie saying, “Everyone should do what they can to protect our individual rights. Never take them for granted, because in the end, no matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity,” Oh continued, that "instructive of both how Melania views her American story and the same anti-immigrant sentiments with which some, in order to prove that they belong here, yank the ladder up from newcomers seeking the same opportunities."
"Such immigrants, like Melania, cast themselves as the 'good immigrant' who came here the 'right way,'" she wrote — even though she worked without a visa at one point, according to some investigations. "Meanwhile, the immigrants Melania now surrounds herself with, like Tham, are props for that very narrative — with zero mention of her husband’s endless cruelty."
