Even though it is odd to say, but Donald Trump may have been a filmmaker rather than the real estate magnate. In his book The Art of the Deal, he says he “flirted briefly with the idea of attending film school at the University of Southern California.”
However, he showed his creativity through hotels, apartment blocks, and casinos, rather than the movie. Still, he has remained a keen fan of cinema. In 2012, Trump revealed his five favorite films. Those include: Citizen Kane (1941), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Gone with the Wind (1939), GoodFellas (1990) and The Godfather (1972).
Read more: Why Did the Statue of Donald Trump go up in Flames?
What can these films tell us about his worldview? Each one of them offers a spectacle of male potency. The movies can be understood as offering him support. Oliver Jones calls social Darwinist, saying: “He views the world as an irrational jungle where the most successful people are tough, masculine and neurotic.”
Here are the five movies that the President learned something from.
1. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Even though Trump’s campaign pitch presents him in America as a heroic visionary, a film by Paul Thomas Anderson unveils him instead as a sociopath. The pursuit of oil in California by Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) crushes bodies and destroys family bonds. Then, in the end, being guilty of murder, he hunches alone and defeats in his version of Trump Tower.
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (2007)
This is a Romanian film directed by Cristian Mungiu, where a student, assisted by a female friend, desperately seeking an illegal abortion. Donald Trump’s view on abortion has proved adjustable for different constituencies, shifting latterly from pro-choice to pro-life. However, Mungiu graphically shows the effects of curtailing women’s rights in the exploited bodies.
3. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
In the book he wrote in 2015, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, Trump reiterated his sense of the nation as citadel: “Nobody can build a wall like me. I will build a great wall on our southern border.”
4. The Age of Stupid (2009)
Included in this film’s montage of ecological casualties The casinos of Las Vegas are included in this film’s montage of ecological casualties, now buried in the sand.
5. Bob Roberts (1992)
Bob Roberts is not running for president, but for a senator’s seat in Pennsylvania. He has many similarities with Trump: both have been educated in military academy and business school, and both are highly successful entrepreneurs.
