The Big Picture: How cinema took on a new political relevancy in the modern age

In the latest issue of Hot Press, we reviewed the romantic comedy The Big Sick, written by and starring Kumail Nanjiani. The story, based on Nanjiani’s life, recounts how he starts to date a white woman, Emily, in spite of his parents trying to arrange a marriage for him with a Pakistani Muslim woman. While the film focuses on what happens when Emily becomes gravely ill, the issue of culture, race and ethnicity is addressed with nuance and complexity.

Due to the rarity of fully-rounded Muslim characters onscreen – and the almost non-existent portrayals of Asian Muslim men dating white women – the film has become a conversation-starter, particularly in America, where Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric and Muslim ban have intensified Islamophobia.

Speaking about The Big Sick on The Daily Show, Nanjiani acknowledged that the film has taken on new meaning now that it has been released in Trump’s America.

“It was just a personal story,” he said of the initial idea. “It was a love story and rom-com about two different families who come from different parts of the world. So when we shot it, it didn’t feel like a political statement. But because it’s coming out now, people are seeing it as a grand political statement, when the only statement it makes is that Muslims are human beings. Radical, I know.”

Nanjiani isn’t the only writer and filmmaker who has seen his work take on a new relevancy in this time of political division. Earlier this year, Hot Press interviewed academic and Holocaust expert Deborah Lipstadt, who was the subject of Mick Jackson’s drama, Denial.

Starring Rachel Weisz, the film is about Lipstadt’s courtroom battle with David Irving, a Holocaust denier who sued Lipstadt for defamation. The film, which was screened in film festivals before the US Presidential election, tackles political agendas, racist propaganda and a stark refusal to acknowledge the truth – all themes that became painfully prescient when Trump was then elected.

This parallel was not anticipated by Lipstadt and the filmmakers when they decided to make the drama.

“We would have preferred that the world be different, so it would not have this new relevance, obviously,” remarked Lipstadt, now 69. “But it has become a metaphor or even a warning for what’s going on today. It’s not just about the political right. It’s about people who say vaccines cause autism when that’s based on junk science. It’s people who say there’s no climate change. It’s the denial of fact and experts to push an agenda, and it goes across the board. Stephen Colbert used to make fun of this idea of ‘truthiness’ and now it’s everywhere. The fact that someone in the White House is talking about ‘alternative facts’! There’s a four-letter word that’s a perfect synonym for alternative facts: lies.”

While these individual films have taken on new meaning in the contemporary political climate, many filmmakers think that the huge divide between conservatives and liberals in America, and the image that President Trump projects, is transforming cinema as a whole. Our own Jim Sheridan, for one, firmly believes that cinemagoers are devout in their belief systems – and their film preferences reflect that.

“Movies are based on belief,” he says. “It’s a binary system for the audience; you believe in what’s happening onscreen, or you don’t. There’s a belief system coming offscreen that the audience has to go along with. And you can see that in the way that independent movies and European movies never play or do well in Trump’s red states. There’s a different value system, and the result is that there’s a divide between Europe and America. And now America is like two countries, too.”

Sheridan also believes that the seemingly infinite amount of stories glorifying all-powerful men has had a major impact on the cultural and political landscape of America.

“If you keep doing Iron Man and Spiderman and Superman, you’re going to get Iron Man in the White House,” he observes, wryly. “Having these men believing that they and only they can save the world; making these movies over and over again is obviously playing into a sense of loss that people have.”