Imagine a standard political spectrum chart: there are two axes; one for economic policy views, another for social policy. Pretty ordinary stuff, you come across it every day on social media. Most of the people you know can be more or less accurately placed there, right? Well, Jon Bois in his new documentary, REFORM!, says wrong.

*Randall Cunningham Seizes the Means of Production* (2017)

Jon Bois is one of the most innovative modern documentary filmmakers. His visual style is so unusual that it cannot be mistaken for anything else. He has such a unique approach to cinematography that any attempt to rip him off is immediately recognized.

Bois utilizes Google Earth to make his films, which creates an impression of a PowerPoint presentation combined with various cinematographic techniques (quick panning, zooming, dollying) and satellite imagery. This combination sounds like it shouldn’t even hold together, but he somehow makes it work. Bois throws archival newspaper clippings and photos into the mix and adds a voice-over filled with jokes and meta-commentary on what’s going on in the story. He finishes it all off by playing smooth jazz as the soundtrack.

Bois uses a lot of charts and statistics in his films, yet they do not hinder the viewing experience—they sort of are the experience. They are the story. He makes the numbers and graphs the narrative; they become interesting, captivating, enchanting. ‘He makes the mundane significant, and the seemingly significant—mundane’ (PTFO).

Bois’ choice of topics is equally distinct. He started out as a sports documentarian, making films heavily mixed in narrative with politics and popular culture before moving away from sports altogether.

By his own admission, he loves talking about storied losers; it’s ‘part of the allure’ to him (GQ). The people Bois covers in his work are almost always in these Don Quixote typa situations, where they go into a fight knowing they will probably lose for the nth time in a row, with all the weight of previous losses on their shoulders, yet they still do their absolute best. Probably, for the love of the game, or because they don’t know what else to do, because this is their calling, their destiny.

This narrative trope applies to all of Bois’ previous documentaries—about the Seattle Mariners, Atlanta Falcons, Minnesota Vikings, Charlotte Bobcats, etc.—as well as to his latest one, REFORM!

With his new film, Jon Bois examines the third-party movement in the United States since 1991, and the Reform Party specifically. He recounts various shapes this manifestation of public demand for an alternative to the two main political parties has taken over a decade, and what has happened to it since. Bois is clearly fascinated with some of the people he talks about—and when watching, you kinda understand why.

He is clearly in awe of Ross Perot (especially his first, 1992 US presidential campaign) and his strategy—or lack thereof. It’s fascination that he feels, but not admiration. Bois appreciates the way Perot was able to find alternatives to mainstream candidates and their established, unimaginative, restrictive, and—frankly—boring campaigns. Ross Perot carried out his presidential bid in a way that actually reflected his personality, with all its flaws and tendencies, and provided an answer to people desiring change. Bois clearly respects that.

He, however, is not infatuated with Perot’s values and what he represents as a candidate—as Bois admits, he wouldn’t have voted for him had he had the opportunity. Many of the flaws of Ross Perot and his Reform Party come from its very nature—populism. The movement wanted to take a part of the popular vote from the two main political parties at any cost—and that’s what brought about its eventual demise.

Apart from criticism of populism in American politics, Bois comments on the negative impact the electoral college system has on the country’s governance. Ross Perot in his first campaign—the 1992 one—received 18 percent of the popular vote, yet got zero electoral votes.

Bois also criticizes the whole practice of pigeonholing voters into two established categories, of forcing people to have to reduce themselves, essentialize their political views. He criticizes the aforementioned political compass charts. It is reminiscent of Edouard Glissant’s idea of the ‘right to opacity.’

Bois destroys and humiliates this essentialization, this hijacking of human complexity in spectacular fashion. At first, he plots all the ‘normal’ and mainstream politicians according to their views on the political compass chart. Then, he introduces us to some of the Reform Party politicians. They fit onto it, but their views are so bizarre, that he introduces a third scale, a z-axis, the ‘fascination index,’ to plot them correctly.

And then he introduces us to politicians like John Hagelin, whose views disrupt the two-dimensional plane of the political compass so much that Bois has to create a separate space for them, the ‘Dimension of Unknowable Politics’ that floats above the chart.

Near such odd figures, a politician of Donald Trump’s level of weirdness (whose political origins lie with the Reform Party) feels uneasy. We see him join the organization, have an intrigue with a potential presidential nomination, yet ultimately reject the idea because he was repelled by other members’ bizarreness. The documentary allows us to see the shift in Trump’s personality and politics between the year 2000 and his eventual Republican presidential campaign in 2016.

In the end of the film, we are shown a proto-version of future Trump’s three presidential bids—the Pat Buchanan 2000 campaign. Yes, it is ridiculed and demonstrated as hilariously inefficient and unpopular, but it feels like a first draft of what will come 15-20 years later. The documentary shows how the Reform Party and specifically the 1992 Ross Perot and 2000 Pat Buchanan campaigns paved the way and prepared the strategy for Trump-2016, only on a much bigger scale.

REFORM! feels at the same time as a continuation of Jon Bois’ previous politically-infused films, and a step into a new, previously uncharted for him direction. He has honed his visual tools to perfection, mastered them making sports documentaries. Now, he has shown that he is capable of using his craft to talk about other things, that his style doesn’t suffer when transferred onto politics. I, as a long-time admirer of Bois’ work, want to see him further expand his thematic range, as well as—possibly—get an opportunity to make a film on a much bigger stage. He should be recognized for the unique voice in documentary cinema that he is.

Jon Bois’ REFORM!

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