Annette Bening’s first visit to the White House in The President and Miss Wade, Rob Reiner’s political comedy tells the security guard that he feels like he’s in a Frank Capra movie. The tribute to the director of How beautiful it is to live!, Knight without a sword! And Juan Nobody This is no coincidence: Capra embodies the hope of the American New Deal, emerging from the Great Depression with the wounds of poverty and uprooting not completely healed, with the ghosts of the harvest vagabonds still looking for work on the roads of the United States. Although best known for romantic comedies such as When Harry Met Sally, Reiner was also a great political filmmaker, a Frank Capra of the late 20th century. Watching his films again while Donald Trump’s nonsense dominates the headlines is an experience as disturbing as it is comforting.
Like the master of the golden age of Hollywood, he wanted to embody the dignity of characters who believe they can improve the lives of their fellow citizens, who choose the right path even if they pay the price. It paints a portrait of an America built on emigration and the mixture of cultures, in which the solidarity of the weakest builds deep networks of defense against the power of the strongest.
Rob Reiner was murdered on December 14 with his wife Michelle in circumstances so tragic that it is difficult to imagine them – everything indicates that the person responsible for the crime was his second son. Trump’s callous and undignified reaction to this parricide – the director has always been very critical of his presidency – reflects the chasm that exists between the conception of the country that Reiner reflects in his films and the cruelty of ICE raids against migrants and the megalomania of the current White House.
Reiner has made a handful of films about American history: In Kennedy’s shadow, on Lyndon B. Johnson; the ghosts of the past, on civil rights, hated by the MAGA movement; either Reveal the truth, about the Knight Ridder journalists who refused to swallow the lies with which the George W. Bush administration justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003. These are films as interesting as they are irregular, even if they deal with the major subjects which continue to fracture the country: the memory of slavery, social injustice, or even the importance of a free press, capable of standing up to power.
He is also the author of two Caprian fables: the film of the trial Some good men, in which he asserts that no one can be above justice and that nothing justifies state violence – Jack Nicholson’s monologue is one of the highlights of trial cinema of all time – and, of course, The President and Miss Wade, the film from which the series is based The West Wing of the White House. Both were written by Aaron Sorkin, perfectly recognizable for their dialogue which always walks the fine line between brilliance and artificiality.
The President and Miss Wade tells the story of a widowed American president, Michael Douglas, who falls in love with a political consultant, Annette Bening, causing his poll numbers to plummet. Douglas plays a Democratic leader, concerned about arms control and climate change, who orders an attack on the Libyan secret service headquarters, but can’t sleep because of the civilian casualties it will cause. He and Bening believe that politics is not only about power, but also a way to alleviate social injustices and look toward the future.
His opponent is a Republican politician played by Richard Dreyfus, ruthless, hungry for power, venomous and who does not hesitate to resort to lies to destroy his adversaries. Michael Douglas defines his way of doing politics this way: “He just wants to scare citizens and tell them who they should blame. » This sentence was written in 1995. Listened to in 2025, its lucidity and validity are impressive.
Even if Reiner’s most political films are still two of his great classics, The Princess Bride And count on me (Stay close to me). In addition to a story about the power of fiction in the face of a very early addiction to screens – a child with the flu is dazed while playing antediluvian video games when his grandfather arrives and reads him a book that will change his life -, The Princess Bride tells the story of an evil king who wants to start a war under absurd pretexts: “We were hired to start a war, a job that has a long and glorious tradition,” explains Vizzini, the character responsible for setting up the racket.
As Stephen King confessed in a nice article about Reiner in The New York Times, count on me (Stay close to me) is a film based on his childhood memories: “I wrote a lot of fiction, but The body This remains the only overtly autobiographical story I have written. These boys were my friends. We never walked along a train track to see a dead body, but we did other things. The story was about my reality, as I experienced it on the dirt roads of southern Maine. » But it is also the description of the United States before the great change of the sixties and the trauma of Vietnam (even if the Korean War already appears in history). The story ultimately becomes the demand for a country in which everyone should have the right to a future and to hope.
The child played by River Phoenix is condemned to marginality. He comes from a broken family, with run-ins with the law, and everyone believes, except his best friend, that he is doomed to end up in prison. Indeed, when he steals money from school and then tries to return it, the teacher keeps the money and accuses him of being the thief, without expressing his regret. “I never thought a teacher could do something like that. But no one would believe me,” the boy said. Only the narrator’s character, the alter ego by Stephen King, believe in him: “You can do whatever you want. » And indeed, he was able to study, obtain a diploma and become a prosecutor. He would end up murdered, senselessly stabbed, while trying to stop a fight in a restaurant.
In these uncertain and dark times that invade us, Rob Reiner’s cinema reminds us that another future is possible. David Remnick has just cited in an article on Trump’s authoritarian drift one of John F. Kennedy’s last speeches, delivered shortly before his assassination, which undoubtedly applies to the legacy of this great director. “In a democratic society, the most important duty of the artist is to remain true to himself. By serving his vision of truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation that despises the mission of art exposes itself to the fate of Robert Frost’s companion, the fate of “having nothing to hold back with pride and nothing to hope for.”
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