‘Sword of Trust’ is a sharp comedy

Lynn Shelton unsheathes a ramshackle portrait of a deeply divided nation in her wonderfully quirky “Sword of Trust.” It’s a bit of a departure for the director, whose oddball romantic couplings in films like “Humpday,” “Your Sister’s Sister” and “Outside In” cede to a larger world view of the sorry state of truth and trust in Donald Trump’s America.

By believing in “the B.S., we begin to erode away the real truth,” says her chief protagonist, Mel, superbly played by funnyman podcaster Marc Maron. It’s a simple statement of what used to be known as “fact.” But now, it’s downright scary Maron

what’s been done to veracity via a plethora of online conspiracy sites and Russian bots. For this hugely enjoyable satire’s purpose, we’re talking Civil War truthers. But it could be an array of “crazies” out there from flat-Earthers to the age-old “who killed the Kennedys” cabals.

Naturally, Shelton pokes fun at them, effectively so. But she also leavens the laughs with some pretty sobering insights into why people need to believe what they want, damn the facts. What begins like a cable-access version of “Antiques Roadshow,” Maron’s curmudgeonly pawn shop-owner, Mel, is approached by two women armed with a well-preserved sword cloaked in the legend of proof the South won the War Between the States. It’s accompanied by a rambling letter of authenticity claiming the saber was presented to Gen. Robert E. Lee by his counterpart from the “army of Northern aggressors” after the bloody Battle of Chickapoo, Chickenfoot, Chickenfist (it keeps changing) in which the loss of 30,000 soldiers necessitated the Union’s surrender.

Even at a brisk 85 minutes, “Sword of Trust” can’t help but meander at times, but we never lose contact with Shelton’s probing themes about the erosion of truth and trust in a time in which both threaten to become extinct. In the end, we’re left to ask ourselves if we’re willing to let them go in favor of believing what we want to believe.