Light glimmers off the First Lady’s black, pointed stiletto as security shuts the door of her Cadillac — a moment in “Melania” that tells you everything the documentary wants you to know about itself.
I was immediately transported into a bizarro pocket dimension: a sparsely populated auditorium almost entirely devoid of young people or people of color, excluding my guest and me. Even before the movie began, the audience had already told its own story.
As to be expected, “Melania” involves obscene amounts of flaunting. Whether its customized fashion pieces, crystal chandeliers and shiny interior embellishments, or golden eggs with caviar, the camera captures all facets of the Trump family’s lavishness. The film also captures the significant number of staff and service workers that are at Melania’s fingertips. At every location, whether it’s Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower in New York, Blair House in DC, or the White House itself, there is a team of unnamed workers, mostly people of color, filmed smiling, gracious to be serving the Trump family.
A particularly striking moment in the film involves a member of Melania’s staff, a fashion advisor of some sort, who explains that she immigrated to the U.S. at age two from Laos. As the woman speaks about the opportunities she’s been given and the American Dream she’s been able to live out, Melania nods along attentively. The scene feels meant to signal understanding and shared experience, even as it unfolds within a documentary otherwise devoted to excess and display.
Later, Melania briefly references her own experience immigrating to the U.S. from Slovenia. In the past, she has acknowledged the difficulty of navigating the country’s immigration paperwork, noting at a 2023 naturalization ceremony that she hired a lawyer to guide her through the process. She has also defended her husband’s rhetoric on immigration, arguing in a 2016 interview that his attacks were aimed at illegal immigration and that she follows the law. Beyond these moments, however, Melania remains largely silent on immigration — a silence that is difficult to ignore given the policies and politics that surround her.
In another moment, Melania struggles to look forlorn about the Los Angeles fires from the comfort of her couch. Soon after, she speaks with an Israeli woman who was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, whose husband remained in captivity at the time of filming. The scene serves as a prime example of the documentary’s endless virtue signaling, carefully calibrated to reflect exactly what its intended audience wants to hear. Brief as it is, the exchange gestures toward empathy for Israel, part of a broader pattern in which the film catalogs Melania’s humanitarian efforts and positions her as a leader deeply concerned with suffering populations.
Even though I knew it was impossible, I blindly hoped that Trump’s appearances in “Melania” would be more understated. It is needless to say that his presence is suffocating. Especially after finally making it to his inauguration, Trump receives just as much screen time as his wife, the namesake of the documentary. In the voiceover, Melania constantly brings up the importance of family to her and the ways that she fulfills her role as a mother and wife, though aside from her husband, the Trump family is barely seen interacting with her, much less caught on film.
While I caught myself giggling at Trump and Melania’s awkward on-the-phone conversations or when Baron winked at his father, full of himself, the audience was starkly silent throughout the length of the film. That is, until towards the end, where Trump praises his wife and then jokes that it’s difficult to be around her — this comment earned a snort from a man a few rows back.
It is also worth noting that on the day of the film’s release, director Brett Ratner was named in documents from the Epstein files made public on Jan. 30. The documents also reference Elon Musk — a recurring presence in the film’s depiction of inaugural events — along with other figures associated with Trump, including Jeff Bezos, Joe Rogan and Mark Zuckerberg. Like Trump, Ratner has denied having a close relationship with Epstein.
Melania is, at its most, compelling in its cinematography and soundtrack, relying on ’80s nostalgia and artsy camcorder shots to do much of the emotional heavy lifting. What it never quite delivers is depth. The film presents Melania Trump as polished, poised and perpetually adjacent to power, but offers little insight into who she is beyond that role. The most memorable revelation, that Michael Jackson is her favorite artist and “Billie Jean” her favorite song, lands as a hollow attempt at intimacy, closing the film the same way it began: glossy, distant and carefully staged.
Copy edited by Katie Peters
