Stephen Maing & Eric Daniel Metzgar's "The Great Experiement" - True/False Review

Towards the end of “The Great Experiment,” a pair of Trump supporters can be seen at home watching the TV and wonder where it all went wrong days after the 2020 U.S. presidential election. It seems unfathomable from their vantage point in New Hampshire, where the last time a Republican won in the state was George W. Bush’s first election, that Trump overtake Biden when they believe the latter never came out to campaign at all while the former held large outdoor rallies that surely they did themselves, if all the Make America Great Again paraphernalia around the house is any indication, but as they see post-mortem on Fox News, it still doesn’t sound right. There isn’t any suggestion by filmmakers Stephen Maing and Eric Metzgar that there’s any factual basis for the two to believe what they do, but for what it appears they set out to achieve, it does seem like a success to at least understand how incomprehensible the outcome of that election was when there’s so little exposure to an alternative point of view that can creep into their consciousness.

“The Great Experiment” refers to George Washington’s description of America around the time of its founding as a government for the people and by the people, but it could describe what Maing and Metzgar, who first partnered as a director and editor, respectively, on “Crime + Punishment,” are up to as well with a mosaic of scenes captured from across the U.S. during the first Trump administration that functions like a litmus test of personal political beliefs, entering both a variety of contentious situations in major cities and private moments that reflect how people have cut themselves off from one another in heated times. The result is a film where seeing what you want to see might actually lead to seeing something you typically wouldn’t in it outside of previous cultural conditioning when there is no grander narrative beyond the passage of time, yet it is gripping nonetheless with the strength of Maing and Metzgar’s resplendent cinematography to carry you through and the choice to shoot in black-and-white not only reinforces the potent images they capture, but the idea that the country seems frozen in time with no thaw on the horizon in terms of public discourse.

Despite having no frame of footage less than five years old, it can appear as if “The Great Experiment” really is occurring outside your door in the States when the film tucks inside an apartment where a woman has to inform a relative that her son staying with her has been abducted by ICE or observes the wildly different responses to a school shooting from people on opposite sides of the political spectrum (leading to one of the craziest scenes at a church in Pennsylvania that may be worth the price of admission alone). The inevitable scenes of extreme social distancing in the midst of the COVID lockdown and an eventual march to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol building in Washington may be markers of a particular era, but even when Maing and Metzgar visit a Civil War reenactment, appearing in tandem with a subsequent excursion to a Confederate monument that sparks fierce protests over its impending removal, it appears as if the battle has never actually ended.

The filmmakers visit more places around the country than most ever do, but in gauging the national pulse panoramically, “The Great Experiment” exposes blindspots. It is amusing to see the much-hyped right-wing villain Antifa represented by two people in New York excited to see one another when they thought they were alone and end up smack-talking the liberals that were thanking police at the rally they attended. A trip to a Mexican border town shows more care and compassion being offered to people in preparation to cross over with a warm meal and other supplies for the long journey than you suspect they’ll receive should they reach the other side where supposedly a better life awaits. Perhaps most subversively, the film opens at a rally where two men holding “Gays for Trump” signs are subject to the kind of ugly homophobia from anti-Trump activists who look like the bigot they’re fighting against and when one of the men says to the other, ”If you look at them, they’re not happy people,” he may look like a man without a country given his unique political beliefs, but offers a sharp and disquieting view of the one in which he resides. It speaks to the union that was ultimately formed all those years ago that as much as Maing and Metzgar travel around, the elegant cohesion of all that they capture doesn’t seem forced, yet they let the jagged edges of geographic and cultural borders poke through, impressively piercing bubbles throughout.

“The Great Experiment” will screen again at True/False on March 7th at 6 pm at the Big Ragtag and March 8th at 7:45 pm at the Picturehouse. It will next screen at CPH:DOX on March 17th at 4:30 pm at the Grand Teatret, March 18th at 10:15 am at the DFI Cinemateket, March 20th at 2:15 pm at the Grand Teatret and March 22nd at 8:30 pm at the Park Bio.