The documentary “The Last Republican” follows the final months in office of Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who represented two districts in Illinois over the span of 12 years. Kinzinger was one of a handful of Republicans who stood against President Donald Trump, refusing to support him in 2016, then going after him more straightforwardly after Trump lost the election of 2020 and tried to overturn the results by inciting a mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, causing multiple deaths. Unlike other Republicans, including then-Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, Kinzinger never walked back or even softened his position on Trump’s role in Jan. 6 in order to help position Trump for re-election and stay close to the party’s power center. Kinzinger instead made his opposition to Trump the defining part of his identity.

He started a podcast titled “Country First Conversations”” and a political action committee to fund anti-Trump candidates and later supported President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris for president and spoke at the Democratic convention. After voting against Trump’s first impeachment, Kinzinger voted for his second impeachment and later said he regretted not voting for the first one.

He also became one of 35 Republicans to support the formation of a committee to investigate the attacks on the Capitol and served on the committee himself. There’s grimly funny segment showing House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, announcing that Kinzinger was going to serve on the Jan. 6 committee before actually asking him, and a snippet of McCarthy casually referring to Kinzinger and another Trump critic, Wyoming Republican senator Liz Cheney, as “Pelosi Republicans.” When Cheney lost her primary in Wyoming to her former advisor Harriet Hageman—who briefly opposed Trump, then supported him again—Kinzinger accused conservative pastors of “failing their congregations” by encouraging support for Trump. He is now a CNN commentator.

The title telegraphs the point-of-view of the movie’s director, Steve Pink (“Gross Pointe Blank”). Pink is progressive who disagrees with most of what Kinzinger stands for politically (the movie opens with Kinzinger baiting Pink by calling him a “communist”). Pink positions Kinzinger as one of the last true or real Republicans, primarily because Kinzinger consistently advocated for the rule of law where Trump was concerned and, in Kinzinger’s words, put “country over party.”

This is, of course, a questionable framing, good for branding and sparking arguments on podcasts but not much else. There are plenty other examples of Republicans positioning themselves above the law at various points in the last 50 years, and it’s not as if Democrats have a spotless record in that regard either. In any given era of American history, the “true” Republicans are whichever ones define the identity of the party, and at this particular juncture, it’s not people like Kinzinger.

“The Last Republican” also mostly elides Kinzinger’s positions on various issues, seemingly to make him more palatable here as a Capra-esque hero who is exclusively defined by standing up to corruption, and against a politician that the filmmaker also opposes. (Kinzinger had a much more progressive record on anti-discrimination legislation than most Republicans, but still voted with Trump 90% of the time, blamed China for spreading COVID, and voted in 2017 to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act.)

This is not to say that Kinzinger’s opposition to Trump isn’t evidence of integrity and a willingness to sacrifice power for principle. That’s plainly the case, and it’s driven home in a scene where Kinzinger and his wife Sofia Boza-Holman sit on a couch in their house cradling their newborn son while watching the House vote to censure Kinzinger and Cheney for serving on the Jan. 6 committee. But there’s a more nuanced movie that could’ve been made covering the same period in Kinzinger’s life, one that took fuller measure of the ancient proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”—though, to be fair, the very end of the movie humorously acknowledges what strange allies Pink and Kinzinger are, at least as far as this project is concerned.

The movie also gives a strong sense of Kinzinger as a person walking against the winds of change and dealing with tendencies in the American character that elude party definitions. “Everybody’s self-centered,” he tells Pink. “That’s the fight now of my next part of life, fighting against that cynicism.”

Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in a scene from the film ‘Wicked’
| Photo Credit: UNIVERSAL PICTURES

She did not eat grass as a child nor is she seasick, insists the green-skinned Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) in Wicked, the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical which in turn was inspired by Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, ‘Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West’.

After Maleficent, which looked at the Sleeping Beauty story from the antagonist’s point of view, here is another revisionist look at the famous wicked witch from the other side of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’.

For those who came in late (like in all those Phantom comics), director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) provides a précis of events where Dorothy liquefied the Wicked Witch of the West and went home to Kansas down the Yellow Brick Road with her dog Toto, The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man and The Scarecrow. As the people of Oz celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch, the Good Witch, Glinda (Ariana Grande), joins in.

When one of the good people of Oz asks her about the Wicked Witch, Glinda admits to knowing her and it is time for a flashback. Elphaba was the daughter of the Governor of Munchkinland, Thropp (Andy Nyman). The colour of her skin, thanks to her naughty mum (Courtney-Mae Briggs), meant Elphaba was always rejected and made fun of by those around her.

Wicked 

Director: Jon M. Chu

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Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum

Runtime: 160 minutes

Storyline: The story of how a misunderstood little green girl became the all-powerful Wicked Witch of the West

She feels responsible for her paraplegic younger sister, Nessarose’s (Marissa Bode) condition too. When she comes with her father to drop Nessarose at the stately Shiz University in Oz, her father insists she stay to see Nessarose is properly settled in. The Dean of Sorcery, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), sees Elphaba’s power and proposes to teach her to control her magic. Glinda or Galinda as she is known then, is pretty, pink and popular. While she wants to study sorcery under Madame Morrible, she is not prepared to have Elphaba as a roommate as suggested by Morrible.

Despite the initial hiccups, the two very different girls become friends, bonding over a wild party at the Ozdust Ballroom. Elphaba is sensitive to the undercurrents at Oz including the fact that animals are being excluded and losing their voice as the history professor, a goat named Doctor Dillamond (Peter Dinklage) reveals. The campus is in a tizzy when the handsome and determinedly shallow Winkie prince, Fiyero Tigelaar (Jonathan Bailey) joins Shiz. Though Elphaba dreams of meeting and impressing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), so that she can ask him to change her skin colour when she finally does meet him, that is not what she asks for.

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Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in a scene from the film ‘Wicked’
| Photo Credit:
GILES KEYTE

Wicked works wonderfully well on so many levels. It is a study of what makes people do the things they do, or think the way they do. It is a look at what is considered normal and what creates a villain, all the while celebrating the joys and tears of being different.

Wicked is a musical, with gloriously choreographed songs and an action film with breathtaking stunts. The sets, physical and CGI, are eye-popping, especially the library with its books (rare and medium rare as Glinda helpfully points out) stacked in gigantic wheels — wish Fiyero did not step on books though. The girls’ room, the Ozdust Ballroom, the Emerald City, the weird and wonderful train that takes Glinda and Elphaba to Emerald City, and many more, are all glorious sonnets to the imagination.

Erivo and Grande own their roles, singing, dancing and dueling with gusto while Bailey is delightful as the callow, charming Prince. Yeoh is grandly inscrutable and there is special joy in watching Goldblum do a jig. The 160 minutes of Wicked slip by in a Technicolor flash and the fact that there is Part II, coming out in 2025 puts a jolly song in one’s heart.

Wicked is currently running in theatres

Published – November 22, 2024 05:39 pm IST

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