“Melania” Is a Forty-Million-Dollar Journey Into the Void

601 points by newyorker 7 hours ago on reddit | 67 comments

[OP] newyorker | 7 hours ago

“From the first seconds of ‘Melania,’ we know we’re watching a commercial: the camera swoops and glides over the luxury waterfront estate Mar-a-Lago, and then, back on the ground, a snakeskin stiletto emerges from an S.U.V. Visually, it’s slick but exceedingly mid,” Lauren Collins writes. “The director Brett Ratner cozied up to the Trumps after spending years in movie-biz exile amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault. (He has denied wrongdoing.) For his comeback, he has summoned all the artistic ambition of a local Realtor who just got a drone.”

“Throughout the 104-minute run time, the shoe motif continues: Melania watching television in heels alone; Melania meeting a former hostage in heels alone; Melania sitting on a couch alone and, at the end of a long day, removing her heels,” Collins continues. “After a while, ‘Melania’ starts to feel like an OnlyFans account crossed with that meme of Kim Jong Un visiting factories. You can’t exactly blame Ratner for relying on a veneer of glamour. How do you capture a subject whose feet are more expressive than her personality?”

Thelonious_Cube | 4 hours ago

> all the artistic ambition of a local Realtor who just got a drone

That's a nice turn of phrase

One-Metal-4293 | 6 hours ago

highkey lol sounds like a bizarre mix of fashion ad and reality TV. who thought this was a good idea

JustSomeBloke5353 | 5 hours ago

Bezos when he wanted to pay Trump a bribe in a manner that is plausibly deniable?

assasinine | 5 hours ago

Don’t forget brazenly obvious.

mindbesideitself | 6 hours ago

Amazon MGM Studios' corporate accountants are probably excited to do some creative accounting.

bmyst70 | 5 hours ago

Huge loss that can be a massive tax writeoff.

theg00dfight | 6 hours ago

Brutal af

Positronic_Matrix | 5 hours ago

It’s like a Pretty Woman remake but in this movie the Slovenian whore gets a pedophile and Bill Gates gets the clap.

EuenovAyabayya | 6 hours ago

> in heels alone

Does that mean what it seems like it does?

RhinoRoundhouse | 5 hours ago

No (not that ive seen it), "Melania watching television in heels, alone;..."

That is a very important comma that is in the article but not the quoted text.

thepatientwaiting | 4 hours ago

Omg thank you! Eats Shoots and Leaves, people!!!

MauPow | 4 hours ago

Let's eat grandma!

Darryl_Lict | 4 hours ago

That would actually make the movie a tiny bit more interesting.

exipheas | 4 hours ago

Thank you kind redditor. I was not going to Google to find out but I was curious.

clharris71 | 29 minutes ago

I thought this, too, until I read the 'meets former hostage in heels alone' and thought we probably would have heard about that, if it were what it seems like. Commas definitely matter.

BeeWeird7940 | 5 hours ago

Huh! I really thought this was going to be cinematic excellence.

lgodsey | 6 hours ago

Feels like we've seen all this before, but better.

Yum_MrStallone | 2 hours ago

The shoes appear at 1:24. Really Thank you. I've never watched Citizen Kane. An award. 🏆

ZambiaSpaceForce | 4 hours ago

Submission statements should be: a 2+ sentence comment in reply to the post, in your own words, and a description of exactly why the post is relevant and insightful.

Submission statements should not be: mainly a summary of the article or mainly a quote/excerpt (and where a quote/excerpt exists, the limit is 2 sentences maximum).

Ghost42 | 7 hours ago

She used to fuck Epstein, and Epstein is who introduced her to Trump.

Introduced may be too polite a word.

Etheo | 5 hours ago

Is the word you're looking for an anagram of "I'm PP"?

Evanescent_contrail | 4 hours ago

Heinz the Baron Krauss von Espy!!

kungfoojesus | 7 hours ago

The movie is a money laundering scheme.

Diligent_Ad4694 | 6 hours ago

money laundering plus bribery plus extortion plus whatever immoral unethical bullshit their hearts desire.

Bezos should just roll up to the white house with trunk loads of cash, have journalists ready to take pics, have douche bag donald take ownership of the trunks, photo op, everyone shaking hands.

Journalists ask what the money is for, douche bag donald says "its for whatever I want to use it for. Oh btw, Jeff doesn't have to pay taxes this year. And he now owns Washington state. Isn't this country great?"

EuenovAyabayya | 6 hours ago

You may yet be surprised at how close to reality that turns out to be.

azure275 | 6 hours ago

Think it's more of a classic bribe lol

seaurchinthenet | 6 hours ago

Well at least the critics' reviews have been entertaining.

Recoil42 | 6 hours ago

(*bribe)

HistoricalHat4847 | 6 hours ago

That's a great new name for her ... The Void

edit: The mods have requested an expanded comment to abide by rule 5, so I'll take it a bit further to say that, if in the void there is nothing, there can be nothing left to say ... just as Melania would prefer. She has (as others have commented) a "vacuous", "vapid", and vain veneer, under which lives a vacancy of value and validity.

Responsible_Name1217 | 6 hours ago

I'm leaning towards The Vapid.

Confident-Weird-4202 | 6 hours ago

The Vacuous.

Yum_MrStallone | 2 hours ago

The adjective form of vacuum. Empty space.

4cardroyal | 5 hours ago

Every theater showing the movie is Void of customers.

Robespierre77 | 6 hours ago

These rich pricks are so quick to waste money, but never have anything for infrastructure or wages. SMH

Puzzleheaded_Toe3584 | 6 hours ago

Wonderfully snarky article.

coffeequeen0523 | 5 hours ago

Amazon’s concealed bribe: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/Ouik2mbPJL

Pedophile Brett Ratner in the Epstein files directed the documentary: https://www.reddit.com/r/Epstein/s/O8BY77YbHo

Attend MELANIA documentary- Free tickets + $50!!! - event gigs - craigslist

​https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueskySkeets/s/ZAUnzYzsgf

Vortesian | 6 hours ago

From the article: It has “all the artistic ambition of a local Realtor who just got a drone.”

Thelonious_Cube | 4 hours ago

Another nice quote:

> We can only conclude that “Melania” portrays Melania in exactly the way she wants to be seen: as rigid, formal, solitary, dourly materialistic; surrounded by lackeys drafted into the closest thing to intimacy that she seems able to access; grinding through bot-like voice-overs filled with awkward gerunds and stilted exposition.

FlanneryODostoevsky | 7 hours ago

Part of me really thinks she’s been trafficked herself and is kind of just going for the ride.

bluehands | 5 hours ago

She is still trash.

To quote the woman herself - I really don't care, do you?

FlanneryODostoevsky | 5 hours ago

She can be held accountable for the things she’s said without being called trash. How old are you? You sound like you think we have forever to change the course of our country.

RivenHyrule | 3 hours ago

But she is literally trash.

FlanneryODostoevsky | 3 hours ago

Grow up.

RivenHyrule | 3 hours ago

Ok shes a vile vapid beast, married to a pedophile.

Did I  grow up enough for you? Or do you want me to keep being nice to monsters you support for no good reason ?

FlanneryODostoevsky | 3 hours ago

I don’t really support her. That exchange she had with Jasmine Crockett left a sour taste in my mouth and only when Greene more recently comes out to publicly oppose Trump didn’t find the ability to stomach even seeing her face.

Like I said. Grow up.

bluehands | 2 hours ago

If you don't think any person is trash, I respect that but disagree.

If you don't think she is trash, I don't understand that.

She has spent decades married to this man and knew him for years before that. Wikipedia says she encouraged him to run for president. She has had a front row seat to many of the terrible things he has done.

Any sympathy for any potential trauma she has is swamped by what she has been a co-conspirator for.

Burial | 3 hours ago

She has definitely been trafficked, Epstein introduced her to Trump. Makes it kind of complicated to hate on her as she's basically been a hostage to the worst person in the world for most of her adult life.

BH_Commander | 3 hours ago

That’s true. At least she got a 7’ tall mute child out of the arrangement though.

Chimie45 | 2 hours ago

Hey I at least heard him call emergency services in the UK.

boozername | 3 hours ago

Pretty sure the person sitting on Ratner's lap in the photo of him and Epstein is Melania. There is another photo circulating with her wearing what appears to be the same top. Hair and skin color look the same. Unfortunately you can't see the arm with the bracelet in the other photo. I'll try to find it again.

Yum_MrStallone | 2 hours ago

Thick_Resolve_3019 | 4 hours ago

This movie is going to be the winner of the new FIFA academy award.

Sad-Dragonfly-3487 | 6 hours ago

I don’t care do you?

Pcpro2017 | 6 hours ago

So gross we have a escort as a first lady

EuenovAyabayya | 6 hours ago

It's had its 15 minutes. We can just ignore it now.

oran12390 | 6 hours ago

I didn’t know this movie existed until Reddit. Now I know the director and producers. I’m sure trumps just furious at all that negative publicity.

ViolettaQueso | 7 hours ago

Actually more than $75M

Ok-Confusion2415 | 6 hours ago

ah if only Gaspar Noë had been involved

crystalz3sty9954 | 2 hours ago

makes sense, i feel like he’d do the right thing in that situation. emergency services are usually pretty solid in the uk

Holiday-Jaguar9464 | 2 hours ago

haha thanks for the heads up! i never would’ve noticed them otherwise. appreciate the award too, you're awesome

Efficient_Rub783 | an hour ago

lol savage comeback. it's wild how some ppl still mix up millennials and gen z like c'mon keep up with the times

Jolly_Sample_1945 | 38 minutes ago

It is just an attempt by Bezos to curry favor.  It’s just a $40 million bribe.

mallclerks | 6 hours ago

Let’s be real - A bunch of us are getting drunk or baked and watching this for giggles, right?

As I totally will end up doing that when I torrent it eventually.

jandrese | 3 hours ago

The description makes it sound like it won't even be fun to riff.

btd3d | 6 hours ago

The original Star Wars (1977) cost $11 million (about $50–60 million in today’s dollars after inflation.