The Founder is a film starring Michael Keaton, who plays Ray Kroc, and chronicles the business intersection then separation from Kroc and the McDonald brothers. The Founder is one of the great American films, and I have watched it a little over two times. My only regret is not seeing The Founder in the theaters and paying for the ticket.
It is hard to explain what makes The Founder so great because it does so many things well. First, The Founder is exposition heavy, and it uses movie visual logic to tell the story. If you want to know if you are watching a good movie or not, ask yourself if you would still enjoy the movie if you were only listening to the dialogue or do you need the images to understand the narrative. You can do things in movies that you cannot do in real life. In The Founder, Keaton can walk out of a bank’s door and in seconds, arrive at the McDonald’s run by a woman that he fancies states away. In real life, if you want to talk to two people at the same time, you don’t practically jump on the hood of their car to pitch them one second, then have the rest of the conversation in an office. In real life, the conversation would occur from the car, through the doors and as you enter the office. The Founder adheres to this visual movie logic rigorously. The Founder cannot be a book or a play and tell the same story in the same amount of time with the same amount of dialogue. The Founder’s momentum and rhythm is powered by the editing, also known as the Kuleshov effect. The Founder feels like a live action documentary as if every moment of these men’s lives was recorded.
The acting prowess of the cast also carries the momentum of The Founder. I foolishly broke my own rule: if Michael Keaton is in a movie, see it in the theater. He is literally the best. The cast is phenomenal. Parks & Recreations’ Nick Offerman literally looks related to the real life descendants of the McDonald brothers. John Carroll Lynch, better known as the cheese maker in The Walking Dead, is the fragile giant. Linda Cardellini was almost unrecognizable as Joan Smith. Patrick Wilson was not given many lines, but his face was saying all kinds of things about his business relationship and marriage. Laura Dern succeeds at an impossible task-to be seen as a good wife, but not a pushover, critical, but not a shrew, supportive, but not blind.
Second, if you watch The Founder several times, it really does not take sides. Watch it one time and think of Kroc as the villain and the McDonald brothers as the heroes. It works. Flip it. It works. The Founder praises and critiques them equally although there are clear winners and losers depending on what your metric is. The Founder treats them as people with histories, desires, goals, preferences, priorities and identities. As depicted in The Founder, Kroc empathizes with people who remind him of who he is as a person and will take a chance on people that others overlook because of class, race, religion or gender. Kroc recognizes good ideas based on his own experiences, is enthusiastic and tireless, is not risk averse, completely commits, is willing to change if something will work better, and is not paralyzed by past failures. On the other hand, his willingness to change leads to reinvention of himself, misrepresenting history, prioritizing himself over relationships and conscious violation of contracts. If there is a director capable of making our most recent President seem like a human being and not just the best at being the worst, John Lee Hancock could probably do it. The McDonald brothers are committed to family, quality, efficiency and originality. On the other hand, these characteristics make them resistant to any change, narrow minded in their priorities, do not express empathy or interest in others who are outside their circle.
By refusing to take sides, The Founder makes the viewer ask him or herself how he or she defines innovation, talent or success. Then it makes us decide what we like and hate about a person or a business-which qualities do we value and disavow. Kroc goes from emphasizing family values to seeing business as war, and we see him successfully deceive himself in believing that he always believed one thing or had one goal whereas The Founder wants us to focus on how there is not one way or one right answer. Kroc’s road was not a well-thought out, sinister plan from the start that led us to Fast Food Nation. There were financial struggles, demoralizing treatment and practical challenges. The Founder reveals that there is no such thing as a static vision. Business is improv and chance.
I still left The Founder with a few questions. Why did Rollie Smith, a successful restaurant owner, want to open a McDonald’s? Why did Harry J. Sonneborn help Kroc, and why in turn, did so many people open the finance doors to Kroc so he could buy so much property when his financial history was so dismal? I suppose that these are the questions that I have are about business in general. Why are Kroc’s financial failures different from another person’s, and people are still willing to float him ideas and money whereas other people would get neither? Why do people with resources see the same failings in others so differently depending on who is failing? The Founder illustrates the real financial insecurity constantly lurking beneath the veneer of success even until the end of the film.
Third, The Founder is an amazing period film. Without ruining the film’s momentum, The Founder reminds us that there was a time when, your food did not come in paper, you needed coins to make a call on a phone, to open your car trunk, you needed a key, there were portable record players, waitresses used roller skates and you ate on a plate using real cutlery in your car. A woman’s social circle was subject to her husband’s whims (wait, that may still be a thing).
The Founder is a must see film. What are you waiting for? See it now. See it again. Then question what you value in yourself, in others and in business.