Reagan | The film divides the United States in the middle of the presidential election

(Los Angeles) Audiences and critics rarely agree, but the biopic Reagan is particularly divisive in the United States, in the midst of a presidential campaign and 20 years after the death of the president adored by the American conservative right.

The film, which traces the life of the Republican president of the United States between 1981 and 1989, has a 98% favorable rating from viewers a week after its release on the website “Rotten Tomatoes”, but only a 21% rating from professional critics.

Because for many of the latter, Reagan is above all a hagiography without solid foundation that overlooks the flaws of a controversial leader. Thousands of fans accuse critics of being elitist by denigrating an “inspiring” and “patriotic” film because of their supposed left-wing leanings.

“You put politics in it, and all of a sudden the film becomes extremely biased,” director Sean McNamara also argues. After reading many of the reviews, he told AFP that he “realized” that it was more the figure of Ronald Reagan that was being attacked than the direction of the film.

This discord between audiences and critics has even become a selling point. In a press release, the film boasts of being “the greatest divide between critics and fans in the history of Hollywood cinema.”

Pure coincidence

The release, coming ahead of a presidential election that promises to be very close in November, also contributes to this gap and to the very interest in it. The film’s $10 million in revenue during its opening weekend is “above average” for a political biopic, observes David A. Gross, a box-office analyst.

In the film, Dennis Quaid (Sunday Hell, Wyatt Earp, The Day After…) plays Ronald Reagan, whose life is traced from his childhood to his dual term in the White House, including his career as a Hollywood actor.

For the filmmakers, the film’s release – at the time of one of the most tense presidential campaigns in American history – is pure coincidence.

The film was first announced in 2010 and then shot in 2020, before being further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Hollywood strikes.

“If you look at this movie through the prism of a non-election year … you would look at it, I think, just as a movie,” director Sean McNamara said. “Now, when people watch it, they can’t help but see the similarities” to the current context.

“Shocked by the similarities”

And there are: the film begins with the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981, a memory recently revived by the shootings targeting Donald Trump this summer.

It also shows Ronald Reagan facing campus protests and questions during his re-election campaign about his advanced age — issues that Joe Biden has also faced this year.

“These things happened suddenly in the last few months,” McNamara notes. “So even I, when I watch the movie today, I think, ‘Wow, this is kind of what’s happening today.’ I was shocked by the similarities.”

Sean McNamara, the director of several films with a Christian message, is used to making films “for the public” that won’t necessarily please critics. But according to the director, the gap between reactions to Reagan is even larger and bears witness to the deep divisions tearing the country apart.

While Ronald Reagan’s heyday in the 1980s was not without its tensions, the nation was “more generous, more calm” with people whose political disagreements did not prevent them from getting together for drinks or barbecues, he says.

Older viewers feel particularly concerned by Reagan today because they remember that time and see something that “no longer exists today” in the United States, adds Sean McNamara.

What would Reagan himself think of the current climate? “Reagan was a great communicator and I think he would have tried to bridge that gap,” the director believes.