Lauren Greenfield’s latest documentary’s title, The Kingmaker, refers to Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines. That title seemed confusing to me because I know very little about the country. Isn’t it a democracy? She was only married to the president so it is not as if she has a record of putting people into power. I didn’t get it, but based on seeing two other documentaries, The Queen of Versailles and Generation Wealth, I thought that it would simply be an intimate profile of Marcos based on her own musings, and she would be condemned by her own words. I was also on the fence about Greenfield. I loved The Queen of Versailles, but hated Generation Wealth. This documentary would be the tipping point regarding whether or not Greenfield would get my time and money when she released movies in the theaters in the future.
The Kingmaker is Greenfield’s best film to date that I have seen. It is a chilling and insightful documentary that has the same psychological effect of a real life horror movie. Greenfield starts off in her characteristic style of interviewing her subject among Marcos’ personal belongings and filming Marcos’ routine, but gradually begins to show a mastery in editing by juxtaposing archival footage and interviews with other people to reveal that Marcos may not be the grieving widow and benevolent, charitable mother of a country that she styles herself to be. Even without this juxtaposition, just the sheer excess of gaudy expensive things, teams of servants at her beck and call and her incessant boasting that she was friends with a list of the most famous dictators of the twentieth century is enough to unwittingly condemn herself.
The Kingmaker slowly expands from being a personal profile to a story of a country still being held hostage by a family with no sense of empathy or reality beyond their willed experience. The title becomes understandable as Greenfield periodically interrupts the profile to give a history lesson to elaborate on the objective reality that Marcos subjectively recalls for the camera. The documentary brings us to the current political climate and becomes a complementary chapter to the US’ 2016 election except it somehow is worse. If you know anything about Chile and Pinochet’s regime, then instead of Marcos, imagine that Pinochet came back, was able to control all sectors of government, change history lessons in school and online so people praised him for his evil deeds so people would enthusiastically demand their destruction then get what they wanted. Marcos slyly confesses to the camera, “Perception is real, and truth is not.”
The Kingmaker reveals that Marcos is not some old, fabulous lady living in her past glory days, but is consciously a power player and master manipulator who is winning. Evil never sleeps. The title is not a descriptor, it is a threat, a promise. I am shocked at how I am considered an educated person, I lived amidst a huge Filipino community in New York, and even though I was familiar with the names and the faces of many of the people featured in the documentary, I never knew the whole story. Greenfield makes a film that remedies my ignorance without feeling like a history or civics lesson, which it implicitly is.
The Kingmaker is a chronicle about how government can fail all the beings that it serves and how institutions and opponents are undermined in a democracy. Greenfield is showing us a window to our future, a dystopian reality in which courts get filled with puppets of a regime to adjudicate cases in their favor, the executive branch uses its administrative enforcement arm to arrest and murder perceived threats and the legislature is filled with Marcos family members and friends who will keep draining the coffers to fill their own pockets then play the benevolent wealthy as they give back a few stolen bills to the children of the people that they stole it from. Oh yes, Marcos has a framed photograph with our very own Presidon’t. Birds of a feather. Greenfield also condemns US for playing a central role in this country’s destruction so maybe we deserve our impending road to destruction that we paved for so many countries.
The only reason that I would not recommend that you see The Kingmaker is because there are images of murdered human beings, suffering animals and people recount being tortured during Marcos’ reign. If you think that those aforementioned moments will trigger you, then run in the opposite direction. I am one of those annoying people who can handle anything, but the animals got me, especially since I did not expect it, and the whole situation is just so capriciously surreal and horrible that it is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. It is not that the human moments are not as bad. It is the banality of evil playback for human beings. The way that human beings torture each other can usually be quite predictable, but the idea of calling a place a paradise then seeing the reality was so grotesque and jarring that it made me wonder if she was sadistically demented.
I learn a lot about a country’s general state of mind by watching their movies. Filipino movies from the black and white era to now feel oppressive, inescapable and doomed. I have seen such greats as Blood of the Vampires, which now seems prophetic, The Blood Drinkers, On the Job and Graceland. These movies are masterpieces for their genre and time, but thanks to The Kingmaker, I feel as if I now have a better explanation for the real life inspiration for these films. Somehow reality seems more terrifying because there seems to be a threat that a third generation will suffer and perpetuate the sins of their parents.
The Kingmaker shows a few heroes, but also ends on a bittersweet note. All their efforts and time devoted to fix the corruption that they did not cause seems as if it will just evaporate, and they will be lucky to simply survive with their lives and the clothes on their back. The entire situation seems hopeless. I felt a kinship with them and appreciated Greenfield’s willingness to bear witness to their courage.
The Kingmaker is Greenfield’s best and most demanding film to date. Instead of just depicting a person, she uses a person as a gateway to a profile about a nation and what ails it. This participatory documentary has minor notes in which the filmmaker is a part of the narrative as she instructs her subject what to do as her subject decides whether or not to heed her instructions, but in the end, to regain control of her film, Greenfield decides to make a moral choice by inviting opponents into her film and sharing space with archival footage in order to tell the complete story, not the story that her titular subject wants her to tell. It was a big risk for Greenfield to overtly displease her subject, especially since her access to exclusive subjects is what her work relies upon. It was a brave and smart movie, which makes it a strong contender for one of the best documentaries in 2019. Great job!
