My America

In this beautifully produced globe-trotting doco Brisbane-based filmmaker Peter Hegedus goes in search of the America he knew from childhood, the America that might be called the World’s Policeman, the America of Righteousness and Goodness and God (of the Blued-Eyed White Western Christian Kind) and… well, Arnold Schwarzenegger. With global tragedy – poverty, war, economic decline and every form of human and social injustice manifest everywhere he casts his gaze – Hegedus wonders out loud and on camera what role might America be cast in this true-life saga: villian or hero? 

Right at the start we see him talking to a shrink: “I love America and I hate America.” In the rarefied speak of therapists, Hegedus ‘works through’ this impulse in his movie and there’s a nagging assumption that his target audience may well share in his political and cultural assumptions, which frankly seems naïve at best, painfully fantastical, at worst. Still, Hegedus is a clever storyteller, and his movie quickly establishes the nature of his obsession and how it was nurtured.

Born in Hungary, Hegedus is the grandson of Andras Hegedus, the Hungarian Prime Minister who in 1956 sent in the Russian tanks and troops to crush the democratic uprising. (This notorious episode and its personal legacy was the subject of Hegedus’ SBS 1999 TV doco, Grandfathers and Revolutions.) It’s not surprising that politics and its human cost is something of an obsession of Hegedus. The first few moments of the movie use ugly cut-out animations to frame the filmmaker’s early life in Hungary and his immigration to Brisbane as a kid and his love of cinema. As a colleague pointed out, the visuals in these animated moments appears to be a wink to South Park. When Trey Parker and co. use this technique it’s cool because it’s cruel and savage, and knowing; not so here. It’s a pop culture reference that goes nowhere (and I suspect it was used to jazz up some dry content.)

Hegedus’ point is that the movies of his childhood were not only an escape but they contained ‘messages’ – about America’s ability, indeed reliability, to settle world issues, usually at the point of Arnie’s, um, gun.

Borrowing a narrative gimmick from Michael Moore’s Roger & Me (1988), Hegedus aims first to interview Governor Schwarzenegger (before the sex scandal). It doesn’t work out. He does travel to the US to talk to Schwarzenegger’s one-time producer, Andrew G. Vajna, who seems a nice fellow, but he doesn’t add much to Hegedus’ theme (like quite a few interviews included here). Meanwhile, Obama is elected President.

Hegedus then trades one narrative gimmick for another; he sets up a ‘media booth’ in the street. He invites passers-by to record messages to the new president. At one point, he sets up the booth (actually a tiny tent) in the shadow of the Sydney Opera House. He’s not hard to feel sympathetic when Hegedus – seeing the confused looks on the faces of tourists – pleads with the passing crowd: “This isn’t a joke,” he declaims in the sincere tones he uses throughout. Of course, it looks like one. Indeed, this part of the film seems as insightful and thoughtful as breakfast television.

Hegedus travels to the States, where he visits recent war veterans and families on welfare, China and Iran and Kenya, where he interviews Somali refugees, as well as Hungary, where he interviews his dad, who tells him his election to use the booth is amusing, pointless and rather childish. To his credit, Hegedus admits his folly and it's one of the few moments of the film that has an irony that cuts through the attitudising that mars much of the film.

If you were to extract the gimmicks, Hegedus harvests some moving moments out of his journey; the film becomes a global postcard of anxiety where values like family and safety and personal security are paramount and are held up as universal aspirations. Real issues of the kind that impact on the day-to-day of people everywhere like cultural practice, civic and social accountability, and political tradition only ever surface to support the notion that we are somehow helpless and at the mercy of history and Hegedus never interrogates any of this with depth and rigour. Which is to say this is not a cerebral film, but an emotional one. (Nevermind that its very premise is intellectual!)

Like so many recent doco filmmakers, Hegedus adopts the persona of a nice guy who is without specialist knowledge and a unique insight. And his ultimate message is a populist one: the world is a global village and everyone needs to feel safe, and all politicians are bound by self-interest… It makes the film feel wholesome and human but it sticks in the throat. It’s a feel good movie about global tragedy.