Man or Myth? New Biopic on Reagan Unfortunately Chooses Fawning Portrait over Reality
DIRECTED BY SEAN McNAMARA/2024
During my first semester in college, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan visited the town where I attended school.
Greenville, Illinois, made for an ideal campaign stop for Reagan in the fall of 1980. A tight-knit community in the central part of the state, the city hosted many residents who shared his Midwestern values.
Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, a small village located several hours north of Greenville. His family moved a few times throughout this region before settling in Dixon, Illinois. His mother, Nelle, belonged to the Disciples of Christ, which strongly influenced Reagan’s spiritual outlook.
I heard about Reagan’s upcoming visit to Greenville but, regretfully, chose not to attend. Looking back on it, it would have been interesting to go to his rally and hear what he had to say.
Being a Chicago native, I was a boilerplate Democrat in those days — and, frankly, I didn’t think about politics as seriously as I now do. I supported President Jimmy Carter and figured he would win re-election, so why bother wasting my time listening to his opponent?
It didn’t dawn on me that Reagan would play such a huge role in shaping U.S. domestic and foreign policy. I can’t say that attending his campaign event would have changed my mind, but it would have provided me more information for the general election that year.
I have more respect for Reagan now than I did as a clueless college freshman voting for the first time in my life. He made some valid points about the adverse effects of an overreaching government.
But as with many public figures, what intrigues me most about Reagan was the complexity of his personality. Offering simplistic narratives of historic individuals by painting them with broad brushes does a disservice to their characters.
Sadly, this is the image presented by Reagan, the new biographical film about the former president. It wallows in reverential deference to Reagan rather than examine the assorted nuances that motivated him during his life in public service. Producer Mark Joseph first conceived of the project in 2010 to counter the distorted picture presented in the 2003 Showtime miniseries The Reagans, starring James Brolin and Judy Davis.
The new movie stars Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan and Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan. Co-stars include Jon Voight (Viktor Petrovich), Lesley-Anne Down (Margaret Thatcher), Xander Berkeley (George Schultz), Kevin Dillon (Jack Warner), Dan Lauria (Tip O’Neill), Mena Suvari (Jane Wyman), C. Thomas Howell (Caspar Weinberger), Aleksander Krupa (Mikhail Gorbachev) and Robert Davi (Leonid Brezhnev). The film is based on Paul Kengor’s 2006 book “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.”
Reagan’s life story is told in flashbacks by Voight, who portrays a former intelligence operative for the Soviet Union. Voight’s character represents a composite of several Soviet agents who kept tabs on Reagan.
The movie focuses heavily on Reagan’s longtime opposition to communism, from his leading the Screen Actors Guild to being governor of California and eventually becoming president. It accepts as incontrovertible fact that Reagan forced the Soviet Union to collapse.
There’s no doubt that his campaign against the Soviets contributed significantly to their regime’s demise. The Reagan administration knew that the Soviet economy was fragile and calculated that boosting the U.S. military would put more pressure on the Russians to keep up. When the Kremlin needed to devote more financial resources to domestic interests, the growing threat it perceived coming from this new American president led it to spend more on its own military.
However, here’s a of the big problems with the film. It fails to consider the changes in governance introduced by Gorbachev that also fueled demands for even more reforms.
The new Soviet leader offered people increased political freedoms, and those living in other Soviet-dominated countries wanted some economic leeway. All this combined led to Soviet satellites becoming independent and the Soviet Union crumbling upon itself.
Gorbachev deserves credit for recognizing the need to expand civil liberties in the Soviet Union. This opened doors that authoritarians throughout the Soviet empire couldn’t close, and a police state collapsed.
However, Gorbachev mistakenly believed he could “reform” communism in such a way that it would provide more political freedom while continuing to carry out a centrally planned economy. He found out the hard way that this just isn’t possible.
Reagan duly gets credit for seeing the opportunities to exploit these weaknesses in the Soviet system and hastening its demise. Unfortunately, neither he nor anyone else in his administration planned on Russia eventually reverting to a totalitarian regime. Wealthy oligarchs now keep a vicious dictator in power, and Russia remains a threat to world peace.
The Reagan biopic focuses on the president’s strong points and glosses over his weak points. It buries Reagan’s complicity in the Iran/Contra scandal and ignores signs that he suffered from dementia while still in office.
Quaid turns in a fairly decent performance as Reagan. But what good acting there is in the film is overshadowed by a bland and shallow storyline that doesn’t do enough to examine the complicated life of a consequential American.
The movie also completely avoids one of the sobering legacies of the Reagan Revolution. As both an actor and elected official, Reagan demonstrated a disturbing allegiance to Corporate America. His presidency helped cement this entity’s grip on influence over our government, much to the detriment of working class people.
This is peculiar given Reagan’s obvious disdain for authoritarianism. In March 1983, he delivered his “Evil Empire” speech. In it, he said of the Soviets: “… let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”
He seems to champion the common man and individual freedom. This is a frequent mantra during his years in public life — and in this film.
However, Reagan helped usher in an era of corporate dominance over everyday citizens. He believed that what was good for the bottom line of Corporate America was good for the nation as a whole. Reagan failed to see how substantial power concentrated in the hands of those who run the largest businesses would adversely affect the constituents he wanted to liberate from any potential tyranny.
The movie has fared well in box office numbers since it premiered several weeks ago. However, it will have no long-term value in contributing to our understanding of Ronald Reagan as a man. By dwelling so much on the myths of this president, Reagan will end up hurting its subject matter much more than helping it.