First lady Melania Trump’s new documentary, inconspicuously titled, “Melania,” was released in theaters across the U.S. and in some locations abroad on Friday. The film follows Trump, who started out as a model from Slovenia, through the twenty days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration as president last January.
Many reviews accuse the film’s protagonist of being lackluster, cold and devoid of substance.
And this would be true if substance were granted only to those who command attention through noise, complaints and trauma dumps. This is, unfortunately for reviewers, not what Melania does.
With a team of filmmakers and producers at her command, Melania Trump focused her documentary’s message: “The ability to be stronger than you were yesterday is a quiet force from within.”
At the beginning of the documentary, Trump lays out her priorities: her son, Barron; her husband, Donald Trump; and children around the world.
During the film’s hour and 44 minutes, you don’t hear the first lady complain. In stilettos, she simply goes about her meetings and appointments.
As these writers criticize Melania for her outward stoicism, it appears they don’t understand why she wants to be outwardly cool.
They are writing about a woman who cannot walk anywhere by herself without safety concerns. A woman who went to Mass alone on the one-year anniversary of her mother’s death, accompanied only by body guards. Who gets scrutinized when she speaks and dissected when she refrains. Who was debanked after her husband left office. Whose husband — deservedly or not — has been ridiculed, caricatured and attacked for the past decade.
And though in many scenes, Melania does walk with “ramrod posture” and has “near-clinical detachment,” as The New York Times so eloquently describes, she appears genuinely happy in many others.
Perhaps these publications are counting on their readers eschewing the documentary, but if they watched it for themselves, they would find a character much more complicated and interesting than the “depth of a Post-it” one they read about.
The camera catches Melania in moments where she seems happy. She sings along to “Billie Jean” with her driver. She appears genuinely comfortable when interacting with designer Hervé Pierre, French first lady Brigitte Macron and others.
In another moment, she meets with former Hamas hostage Aviva Siegel, whose husband was at that point still held captive in Gaza. When Siegel broke down in front of the first lady, saying she wished she could still help her husband somehow, Melania put her arms around the woman and told her carrying on was helping.
The documentary also offers a glimpse into how the attempted violence against her husband has affected her and Barron.
While discussing the family’s Inauguration Day itinerary, the planning crew asks where they would like to get out of the car to greet the crowds. Trump looked at his wife who simply responded, “I know Barron will not get out of the car . . . And I respect that.”
At another point, Melania said Barron was forced to learn integrity and self-restraint early, since he was 10 years old when his father’s first term began.
The documentary naturally culminates in Inauguration Day itself. After Trump was sworn in, the film crew follows Melania as she walks out of the Capitol with her husband. In a voice-over, she says, “Being hand-in-hand with my husband at this moment is very emotional. Nobody has endured what he has over the past few years. They have tried to murder him. Incarcerate him. Slander him. Now here he is.”
Contrary to popular opinion, the image of our president’s wife is not blurrier with this picture. No, it has clicked into focus. It is wrong to expect Melania Trump to be a Kardashian in the White House. It is also wrong to expect her to be Michelle Obama.
Melania Trump did not offer the world a sob story of her humble Slovenian origins or how she rose to become the wife of the most powerful man on Earth. And perhaps she did not because she knew this would attract derision too.