A profound look at red-state America
The name Donald Trump isn’t mentioned once, and there are no Make America Great Again rallies on display, but unmistakable political overtones populate the documentary “Monrovia, Indiana,” an examination of day-to-day life in a small, red-state town.
Legendary, prolific director Frederick Wiseman, whose film career has been devoted to observing slices of Americana and making them into something profound, finds himself on fertile ground in the Midwest, homing in on decent folks’ attempts to preserve their way of life, even if the ways of life around them have irrevocably changed.
Indeed, a funereal inevitability hovers over the film: The town’s few youths and people of color remain voiceless, while white oldtimers debate whether to install a new park bench, or discuss their heart-bypass procedures at a greasy spoon. Many city planners recoil at the specter of new housing, in the tacit belief that progress belongs somewhere else.
Wiseman never makes any commentary about the residents, or the place. He sets the camera in a room and lets the townspeople conduct their business. We listen in at such venues as a beauty parlor, restaurant, gun shop, veterinary office, pig farm, church, graveyard and Masonic lodge. (The only major thing missing is a basketball game, a key ingredient in just about any Hoosier’s life.)
As usual, Wiseman’s scenes extend for long stretches, which can be an acquired taste for some viewers. Yet this time around, he ends his film with one of the most shattering sequences of his career — a quiet elegy to a place that shows no signs of changing until the bitter end.