In The Lexington pub in London, cameras watch as a crowd spends the night drinking and watching the US election play out.
There are sadly too many "I remember where I was when" moments in my life, but with this one I was in a hotel on a week of work, and had set my alarm for 5am to catch the winner's speech. Some personal issues kept me up till 0100 that night, and when I briefly woke at 0400 I turned on the TV just to quickly check how it was going; like everyone I had believed the media's assertions that Hillary had it in the bag – 98% sure in some cases. Like the people in this film, I watched with disbelief when my echo chamber turned out to be just that – and the votes of many others took their toll. It was a shocking night, with the Trump victory being the biggest shock, but also things like Hillary not conceding but sending Podesta to tell her supports to go home – perhaps they too had refused to believe that everyone in their bubble had gotten it so wrong.
The film mostly observed; there are some Trump supports but mostly there are people having a drink and assuming it will be an event – but not the type that happened the way it did. The sense of shock is well captured, and the film ends on a positive but stunned noted, and mostly it is engaging as a time-capsule. The film observes, and is mostly balanced in its presentation – of course it is London so the majority of people are anti-Trump (although fewer are pro- Hillary), but still it gives good time to the comments. For me it is the sense of shock that is most palatable – and this is what I remember myself. At least with Brexit the polls were close and, while a shock, it was not an impossible result – but with Trump/Clinton everyone in the media had told us it was impossible, and the vast majority of coverage was heavily covering Trump's negatives (although to be fair, there were more of them so of course it took more time). For me it was the knowledge that in the UK and the US, the ruling class of politics and media was so disconnected from a deep swell of anger and frustration – this is what struck me. It struck harder knowing that neither vote will change anything for those who felt they were somehow upsetting everything.
Scafuro's direction is solid, and his own politics mostly stay out of it. The audio is very impressive for being captured in a very noisy pub, and it looks good too. It doesn't expand out into commentary or discussion as I would have liked but it does what it came to do, and is an engaging snapshot as a result.
