"One Bright Shining Moment" is an informative look at a largely forgotten era in American politics. The film does an excellent job of recapturing the emotions of a divided nation struggling to define itself, and creates a sympathetic portrait of those who pinned their hopes of a better future on one man who - despite his best intentions - lost the Presidency in a landslide. The filmmakers do much to rehabilitate George McGovern as a decent, principled Midwestern politician who was driven not by ruthless ambition but by sheer conviction. All of this is done through interviews with McGovern himself and those who followed him into the field of political battle. Figures who've since drifted into obscurity - Gary Hart, Ron Kovic, Gloria Steinem - reemerge in intimate discussions about the 1972 campaign and contemporary issues that I found fascinating.
But the documentary also suffers from uneven pacing due to the inclusion of either irrelevant or excessively long interviews that mostly serve to advance the speaker's own opinions. The film's basic narrative structure is confused: on multiple occasions the story deviates from the 1972 campaign, alternatively to focus on McGovern's early career or attack his political opponents in both parties. As informative as it is, the documentary engages in hero worship of McGovern that side-steps his flaws and ignores the fact that his nomination was engineered by Nixon to ensure his own re-election. McGovern's crushing loss is mostly brushed aside almost as a footnote, and no mention is made of how the 1972 disaster helped push the Democrats away from the liberal vision of America that McGovern fought for; it's hard to see how McGovern was vindicated in the end as the filmmakers suggest.
I wish I could say that the direction makes up for the film's storytelling problems, but the filmmaking is amateurish with a heavy reliance on the "Ken Burns" visual effect, sloppy transitions, and a low-grade soundtrack. This would be fine for a student film, but not for a feature-length documentary. All in all "One Bright Shining Moment" stumbles but is nonetheless an informative look at an important period in American history. 7/10.
