The new Reagan film biopic is crack cocaine for us old Reagan true believers. It marches through each great moment and line that are already indelibly etched in our memories.
There’s his debate (“There you go again…”) and landslide against Jimmy Carter, his dashing response to being shot (“I forgot to duck.”), the air traffic controllers strike, his personal appeal to aging Soviet leaders that finally results in his momentous Geneva summit with Gorbachev, his debate with Walter Mondale, in which he killed concerns about his age, humorously citing Mondale’s “youth and inexperience.” Almost nobody wanted him to say “tear down this wall” in Berlin, but it became his greatest moment. The failed attempt at massive nuclear disarmament at Reykjavik because Reagan refused to abandon missile defense was another masterstroke adding nails to the Soviet coffin.
And then there are Reagan’s formative events as a young lay preacher in his smalltown Illinois church, his charming but drunken father and pious mother, the inspirational boyhood novel (That Printer of Utrell’s) that he loved about an alcoholic’s son who becomes a Christian and goes to Washington, DC, his lifeguarding on the river, his playing football at Eureka College, serving as a radio sportscaster in Iowa, becoming a Hollywood star, fighting Communist influence in the Screen Actors Guild, his failed marriage with actress Jane Wyman, the collapse of his own acting career, and his growing passion for politics leading to his televised appeal for Barry Goldwater, which didn’t help Goldwater but did make him governor of California and leader of conservative Republicans until his 1980 election as president.
All of us who loved Reagan and who are old enough to recall already know these events well. The reminders in this film are vivid and emotional. This is true even though the film itself is not a great production. It has the technical and moralistic feel of a 1980s devotional film shown in church basements. The film’s producer specializes in faith-based films, hence the important focus on Reagan’s early church experience. There is the long complaint that “Christian” and “faith-based” in film usually mean lower budget and lower quality. Scenes shot at Reagan’s ranch retreat, with the Pacific Ocean in the distance, are beautiful. But the film, among other oversights, lacks a powerful musical score, which Reagan’s epic, and world transformative life surely merits. His good-bye letter to America after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, with which the film concludes, is always powerful.
This Reagan biopic is a message film. Fans of the message will like it, and skeptics of the message are mocking it. A more artistic production might have been more persuasive. But sometimes the true believers need bolstering, and this film provides it. A silly review in The Daily Beast bemoaned: “You may have suspected that this MAGA-tinged hagiography would be absolute trash, but it turns out you didn’t think low enough.” The clueless reviewer doesn’t notice that Reagan and this film rebuke our current politics by celebrating idealism, charity, optimism, and good will, all which Reagan is shown embodying. Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neil praying with Reagan at his post-assassination attempt bedside by itself shames our current moment and points to humanity’s higher aspirations. Reagan did not demean, mock or demagogue. He was the product of early 19th century Protestant Midwestern piety, earnest, sincere, crusading, and, in his case, varnished and made worldly by late 1930s Hollywood. And his Hollywood panache gave him the elan to be more than a politician and to incarnate the national spirit, almost monarchically.
Reagan called himself the Errol Flynn of B films. He was not a great movie actor, but his Hollywood years were only a preparation for his greatest performance as president who wins the Cold War. The film interestingly develops only Reagan as a serious character, with everyone else as supporting backdrop, even Nancy. Long time aides Mike Deaver and Bill Clark have a few lines, James Baker, and Ed Meese almost nothing. Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger is nearly silent, and Secretary of State George Shultz has a few complaints. Treasury Secretary and Chief of Staff Don Regan never appears. Someone looking like Budget Director David Stockman speaks once. National Security Advisor John Poindexter briefly appears. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher briefly waxes hot and cold. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is quietly shown. Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone makes a supportive phone call. An elderly looking Gorbachev, who was actually 20 years younger than Reagan, is foil and friend in a few scenes. The spotlight is exclusively on Reagan. He was not an egotist but surely as an actor he would have appreciated being center stage.
This film, despite its flaws, is emotionally powerful for many of us because of its memories. The Reagan years for some of us, at least through the mists of time, seem magical. If you were in DC, it felt like a dream, like the Wizard of Oz. Reagan was the mysterious and powerful Wizard, behind the White House gates, his motorcade occasionally emerging amid great fanfare, with trucks blocking intersections and helicopters overhead. When he appeared, it was like a movie set. Once my father and I encountered him leaving a Georgetown club. He stepped onto the limousine door sill and waved with a grin. The crowd was ecstatic. One girl was hyperventilating. That image never leaves my mind.
Reagan’s critics thought he was a vapid Wizard, only a façade, manipulated by stagecraft. But he was a shrewd Wizard, who deployed his strengths and didn’t agonize over his weaknesses, as his presidential predecessors had. His greatest gifts were serenity and confidence. And if he was the Wizard, then the Soviet Union was the Wicked Witch, always hovering in the sky as a threat. But the Wizard kept us safe and ultimately extinguished the Witch with shocking sang-froid.
Who really was the Wizard? This film tries to explain but doesn’t really answer. Even Nancy, in real life, admitted she did not truly know him. He remains a mystery, a smiling Sphynx, whose legacy will endure. Reagan the film across two- and one-half hours shares many familiar anecdotes about the man. But the Wizard is inexplicable, which was his power. And the whole world was a beneficiary.