Much of the negative criticism for documentary filmmaker Errol Morris’s American Dharma is aimed at Morris not challenging his subject enough on his beliefs. Steve Bannon, the right-wing luminary and short-lived White House Chief Strategist to Donald Trump – just a few of Bannon’s many roles on the world stage – is allowed to present himself as a towering figure of great foresight and heroism, the critics claim. What these critics have forgotten (or possibly don’t know), is that direct confrontation isn’t Morris’s preferred mode of operation. He’s said as much in a recent interview about American Dharma:
“I don’t really believe in adversarial interviews. I don’t think you learn very much. You create a theater, a gladiatorial theater, which may be satisfying to an audience, but if the goal is to learn something that you don’t know, that’s not the way to go about doing it. In fact, it’s the way to destroy the possibility of ever hearing anything interesting or new. I guess I don’t believe in them.”