The film is so brutal that it needs a warning: it shows drastic violence, it says in the opening credits, bad swear words can be heard; You can only see him on Youtube from 18. Aliens, zombies, mutants or other extraterrestrials are invading a city, they roar themselves hoarse, threaten their opponents with total annihilation, then they fight their way free and roll over people. A woman is almost crushed, another is shot, a policeman, wedged in the glass door, screams in fear of death. Only after hours of fighting can the pack be overwhelmed and driven away. After their campaign, your mentor sends his armies an encouraging greeting: “You must never forget this day.”
Donald Trump had gloriously lost the presidential election last November, but he was no more willing to accept that than his supporters. The most loyal of them rushed to Washington on January 6, 2021. On that day the result should be officially confirmed in the Capitol, Vice President Mike Pence would also formally declare Joe Biden the winner. But for Trump’s people he was the winner, the election stolen and the suddenly disloyal pence, who no longer wanted to submit to his boss, a traitor. They erected a gallows in front of the Capitol.
As if Sergej Eisenstein had mounted it for maximum effect
Now there is a film about it “Day of Rage”, a horror piece that far surpasses the January news pictures.
An investigative team from New York Times In the six months that has passed since then, he has viewed and evaluated thousands of cell phone films that have been sent on Facebook and other channels and some have been deleted and cut a forty-minute teaching piece from them, which sometimes looks as if Steven had it Spielberg staged and Sergej Eisenstein mounted for maximum effect.
This scene from the film shows broken glass. According to the voiceover, the participants wanted to “defend our way of life”.
(Photo: NYT)
The famous staircase scene of Odessa in “Battleship Potemkin”, re-enacted and parodied dozen times, appears reversed here as a flight of stairs upwards: wildly costumed figures, as they usually jump around in Indiana Jones and his colonial adventures, band together in the name of democracy Storming the hoard of American democracy. As if it were a national holiday, huge flags in red, white and blue are waving, but these symbols herald a military campaign: However, on every second cloth probably made in evil China is the name of the leader who wanted to make America great again and at least as much evil enemies within was prevented from completing his work.
Some, not a few, understood the trip to Washington as a “call to arms”
The Day of rage starts with a few facts: Facebook had agreed to storm the Capitol in Washington more than a million times, maps of the building were passed around, but the FBI had ruled all warnings negligible. At most one or two dozen police officers were standing by to protect the parliament building from the predicted attack.
The SZ editorial team has enriched this article with content from YouTube
Load content now
The day also begins with the prayer-like oath, which is sworn every morning in schools in the United States with the hand on the chest of the flag. The off-screen comment admits that the demonstrators may see the trip to Washington as the fulfillment of a patriotic duty. Some, not a few, understood it as a “call to arms”. As one participant said at the beginning, they wanted to “defend our way of life”, and the combatants apparently see this freedom as a threat.
To defend this way of life they throw themselves in camouflage, wave flags, wear helmets and hit everything in their way with baseball bats: barriers, windows, doors, police officers. At least five figures, the right-wing radical brothers of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers among them, form a militia within the crowd of several hundred. They know full well that the media are lying and that they are all about to be betrayed of their president. “Stop the steal!” they chant, stop the electoral fraud, and again and again – they are the real patriots – “USA!”
Half an hour’s walk away, Trump gives a speech, raving about his landslide victory, complaining of a lack of support, demanding courage and strength and announcing that he will be moving to the Capitol with his supporters. But like the general in a cabinet war of the 18th century, he only sends his own people into battle and waits a safe distance to see what happens.
At least in the eyes of the participants, it will be a popular uprising. In their self-righteousness, the stormtroopers leave no doubt that they are making history and that they are right in doing it. They accuse the police officers who want to stop them that they are the oath breakers because they support usurpation against the law. Intoxicated by their own masses they rush off, in a few minutes the barely defenseless police officers are overwhelmed, the assault can begin. They beat their way through, smash the windows, splinter doors, it looks like something in an action film.
Trump supporters attempt to tear down the barriers on the day of the riot. In the film, someone shouts ecstatically: “This is a motherfucking war zone!”
(Photo: John Minchillo / AP)
One of them screams ecstatically: “This is a motherfucking war zone!” A war like in the cinema, which simply could not be waged with this superiority in Afghanistan or Iraq. Another has to tweak, the success surprises him so much, “it all happens in real life!” But the fighters themselves seem so unconvinced of the reality they have created that they have to film it continuously – the comrades, the jerky advance, the splintering windows. The hustle and bustle needs to be documented – for the figs that stayed at home, for later veteran meetings, for eternal memory. They’re their own war correspondents, better embedded than any reporter.
The team around the producer Haley Willis almost completely dispenses with journalistic images, objectivity is achieved through the combined subjectivity of the recordings, the commentary from the off organizes the course of the six and a half hour rebellion. But they are so admirable Performance of this “visual investigation” is just as terrifying is what the pictures show. “Day of Rage” is not a feature film, but a documentation of catastrophic events.
It cannot be ruled out that it is deliberately misunderstood that the permanent self-celebration of the attacker is considered by fans and imitators was porn is consumed as the finest hour in which war could be played before the eyes of the world. Everyone else sees with horror what conspiracy gossip can do even in an established democracy. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader in the Senate until January, spoke of a “failed insurrection” at the time. In the vote last Thursday in the House of Representatives, only two Republican MPs had with the Democrats for the establishment of a committee of inquiry agreed.