Did you watch MELANIA, what did you think?

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Unless you see a film, you can’t have an opinion, right? So in the Brett Rather-directed documentary MELANIA from Amazon MGM Studios, about 20 days on the way to becoming FLOTUS for a second time, First Lady Melania Trump’s heels can be heard as a lonely echo in the frequently empty halls of power.

Or, you can listen to Ravel’s “Bolero” soundtrack embedded behind the footage as a quiet march to a thundering echo that is Melania Knavs' journey from home country Slovenia, to an inexplicable moonshot rise to the most recognized female titular figurehead in the United States of America, in a chic Bolero hat in front of the entire nation and the world on Jan. 20, 2025. All of which happens in the lead up and preamble to a fraught second, non-continuous, term of the controversial Presidency of one Donald John Trump, who not more than a six months earlier on July 13, 2024, dodged a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Mrs. Trump’s Signature Bolero Hat Finally Explained?

No matter how you view this hyper-stylized, lush, visually beguiling chronicle of First Lady Melania’s march to the halls of power culminating in the Inauguration of the 47th President, you will bring your own personal and political lens with you. Yes, that means your own bias.

You will cringe at Tim Cook on the dais with the Trumps, or throw shade at the election-making triumvirate of UFC boss Dana White and SuperPodcaster Joe Rogan bookended by “free speech” lightning rod Elon Musk. Have we come to this, you may grumble, a bowing down to a tryant, who got the knee from all of Silicon Valley, even Mark Zuckerberg finally? You’ll look twice at 6’ 9” whiz kid Barron Trump, who energized the podcaster base with the likes of cagey Louisiana comedian Theo Von, and a targeted YouTuber army to win big votes, and maybe even enough to have tipped the election in his old man’s favor. This being the same 10-year-old from the first term, now 19 in MELANIA, which was released Jan.30. Only son Barron attends NYU’s Stern School of Business, has integrated into the wider Trump sibling group, who flatly refuses step out of the Presidential motorcade vehicle to greet the public for fear that another stray shot may fly at the very same father he just helped get elected. In a stroke of luck, extreme cold temps force a stadium-style celebration. So no one will be stepping onto the pavement this time. You may also rejoice at Michelle Obama's no show at the swearing-in, a singular act of courage, if you are on the Left.

Republicans will rejoice at the jewel-box, ballerina-like discipline, and unrelenting poise of Melania Trump as she pirouettes through her positions. This sleek model turned third wife is depicted without a hair out of place, in haute couture worthy of the world stage. As sexiest-ever First Lady, she adorns on the arm of their global strongman President Donald J. Trump, who says “you look so beautiful” as adoring husband. Although he prattles on with “she is so difficult… but there’s no one like her,” according to the most powerful man in the free world for the GOP.

Maybe someone should tell Melania even Marylin Monroe used to add a safety pin on a purposely busted shoulder strap to ward off jealousy, prove she wasn’t too perfect. In this Hollywood-like cosmetically perfected Washington, DC, you desperately want Melania to find her own safety pin, show a little vulnerability. But Melania in MELANIA never takes us to the place where her inside voice over lives? Filmed in the “you were there” genre, Melania’s actual voice over insists that “Everyone wants to know” about her journey to FLOTUS a second time, and she’s not wrong. People probably want to know everything, but maybe for the wrong reasons? It can not be easy to maintain 24-hour Secret Service surveilled public life that is viewed as chaotic by many, run on a non-stop hamster wheel of social engagements and political dust-ups alongside the most reviled and revered President in US history.

"Recollections may vary” as the late HRM Queen Elizabeth II famously said?

Although recollections may vary, no one can deny that Melania Knavs, who modeled in Milan and Paris as Melania Knauss, does not have an incredible back story. Born in the former Yugoslavia on April 14, 1970, she modeled in the US in 1996, met Donald Trump then a private citizen businessman in 1998 in Manhattan, and by 2006 both gave birth to son, Barron William Trump and became a naturalized US citizen. As Trump’s third wife, following “Showgirl” Marla Maples and formidable wronged first wife Ivana Trump who dubbed Maples with that moniker, Melania faced a very complex family dynamic as a precursor to a very intense political dynamic to follow.

Certainly Ivana Trump's 2022 shock death in her Manhattan stairwell, as well as Melania's own mother, Amalija Knavs's Jan. 9, 2024 death swirls in the background. Overshadowed by the eerily timed death of the 39th President, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter on Jan. 9, 2025. In keeping with his character, the soon-to-be 47th President "DJT" to his friends, will complain that someone purposely scheduled the Ohio State vs Notre Dame 2025 College Football Playoff National Championship to clash with his big inauguration day.

Did anyone even watch the whole Inauguration of the 47th President?

In MELANIA, only in theatrical release from MGM now owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, we see couture designers, interior designers, tiers of staff surrounding the final product, a seasoned First Lady Melania Trump polished to the nines. She video-chats with French First Lady Brigitte Macron, and hosts beloved Kuwait-born Queen Rania of Jordan. America's sophisticated internationally minded First Lady holds her own, and follows similar passions for children’s wellbeing.

FLOTUS is also clearly aligned with marginalized youth as she advocates for foster children, “only three precent of whom attend college.”

Considering her frosty and borderline cruel reception in Washington, DC, plus being snubbed by Vogue, her alignment with these dispossessed children is perhaps her only real poker tell, how the shunning and shut-outs took a toll. The Bolero music and the Bolero chapeau, that will be maligned in the press later as a "McDonald's Hamburglar" hat, makes sense after the film. This Bolero is tipped to shut out media flashes, keep the paparazzi  in their place. You realize she learned a thing or two from her first term signature 'I really don't care, do you' jacket days. She's not going to appear in curlers or sweats behind the scenes here, this is a gleaming front-of-the-house documentary.

On the long march to the Inauguration, which will be followed by a series of galas ending at 2 am with Starlight Ball, Melania confesses that “being up 22 hours felt like nothing,” but you get the picture that running alongside a President known to sleep barely four or five hours night is exhausting without boundaries of her own. Melania is undeniably brand Trump now, as gleaming as the flourishes of gold leaf that adorn her homes, and now in the remade Trump white-and-gold themed White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. A place where former Presidents are given just five hours to vacate as the current Commander and Chief moves in, with the current First Lady.

On that note, just a passing thought through this bird’s eye view of all the gilt pomp and circumstance, is the reported $28 M USD earned for this project walking money or “pin money” as the wife’s tales call it? Will we see this documentary differently in a decade, when Melania née Knavs now Trump is no longer FLOTUS but has taken flight on her own? As the first Presidential spouse to speak five languages from a war-torn country that no longer exists (Yugoslavia), Melania Trump certainly has a worldwide platform from which live out any scenario she chooses. Her father Viktor Knavs films her filming this documentary, and you imagine her survival in the White House and married to Trump is a credit to her parents, whom she has taken with her on this incredible journey onto the world stage.

For the so-called "haters' out there? Amazon Studios will report grosses of $7 M USD for the opening week of this documentary produced by Fernando Sulichin, Marc Beckman, in conjunction with Melania Trump. Bezos et al will also state that, "Melania has delivered the largest documentary opening in the past 10 years (excluding music and concert films)." Which makes you wonder if they mean Melania the person as producer, or MELANIA the movie... maybe they mean both.

MELANIA is showing in select theaters, open now, in US and abroad. How you choose to watch it (or not), it will join the historical record of many First Ladies of the United States who’ve taken up the storytellers role. For more information and screening times, visit here.

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