DIVIDE AND CONQUER: THE STORY OF ROGER AILES: A Blunt Look At Today’s Politics

I want to be as fair as I can throughout this review, because it can be very difficult to separate the quality of the documentary from the subject matter itself. For Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, I constantly battled between being subjective to the topic and being objective to the craft of the film itself. I wanted to avoid falling into an easy trap of emotional release.

This documentary, squarely directed by Alexis Bloom, gave me a rare opportunity to accept multiple truths at the same time. It is true that Roger Ailes was a genius of television, who understood everything about the audience and knew exactly how to market a message or a belief out to the public – that he became the most important and influential figure in American media. It is also true that Ailes was a vile human being who used his power to bully, belittle, and sexually harass people under him.

Eye-opening Insight and Shocking Stories

The film is at its most energetic when it’s covering Ailes’ early career, when he first became a media advisor to Richard Nixon. During the first half of the documentary, you could forget for a second all the terrible things Ailes has done and just see a young man who is hungry for opportunity, success, and influence. We learn how he was diagnosed with hemophilia at the age of four, how his condition made him unable to serve his country in Vietnam, and how he has always viewed television as his only way to pay back the country. In a way, he’s trying to live the American Dream, and is willing to use smart if not cunning ways to succeed. This is like watching a young Charles Foster Kane shape his career. For a moment, no matter how brief, I was able to put politics aside and… sort of root for the man to make it. 

It is through the interviews with journalists and business associates that the documentary slowly shifts from a man who wanted to influence his country for good to a man who is solely responsible for creating a rift in our society. Multiple shocking stories unfold, told in a straightforward manner. Bloom just sits and let the people talk, as many brave women speak up about how Ailes approached them up front and how he would manipulate people or events behind the scenes to ruin lives. And everything about those stories just shows the amount of damage a person can cause when he has too much power.

A lot of the documentary painted more color into what I thought Ailes was as a person, from America’s Talking to the claim behind why Ailes created Fox News. Simply but efficiently, Bloom uses every single interview to underline key character traits of Ailes. He never trusted anybody. He understands the lowest common denominator in the audience. He knows exactly how to sensationalize scandal. He knows exactly how to peddle on a narrative without any evidence because that’s how he gets views, and therefore, money. He treats every human interaction as transactional, where he will always find a way for himself to benefit. And I haven’t even talked about the gay terrorists, bugged offices, and bulletproof windows.

Standard Editing, Typical B-roll, and an Odd Decision

Where the film occasionally loses its steam and creative style is when it explores Ailes’ childhood, certain hometowns, and moments of historical exposition. In these moments, the documentary resorts to methods that are… too traditional for me. It’s easy to plant in your typical stock footage and old ’70s photo, but a lot of that imagery can be distracting or unimportant, especially if the narration (or the voice of the person being interviewed) is far more important.

It is also important to note that the editing of The Story of Roger Ailes is not that creative. There’s little style or flair to how the documentary flows. The re-enactments are small in scale and budget, where the productions, editing techniques, and sound design don’t stand out. Most of Bloom’s film is just old footage, recreations, and a lot of talking heads, where you have to remember the job title of each talking head and how they are connected to Ailes.

Lastly, the film makes an admirable choice to include actual words from Ailes himself, but Bloom takes an odd step further and gets a male narrator to play the role of Ailes and narrate certain scenes. The result is just distracting and confusing. I hear a faux voice of Ailes talk about himself and his ideas, all while thinking that Ailes in actuality is dead – almost like how Gotti made John Travolta narrate to us from the dead.

I also can’t help but feel that if Bloom was able to get producers like Glenn Beck onto the show, how hard was it to just get a few seconds of Megyn Kelly?

The Story of Roger Ailes: Like Citizen Kane Meets Spotlight, Minus the Empathy

If there’s one reason to see this documentary, it’s that it knows the right time to show respect and when to not hold back on the punches. The fact that it had the decency to show some respect first is already an admirable quality. That’s one of the key factors that keeps The Story of Roger Ailes but becoming a one-sided propaganda piece. That being said, when it’s time for Bloom to land a punch, she goes straight for the gut.

It’s quite a journey, really, to be given a small opportunity to respect the man, only to have that respect slowly slip away with one shocking story after another.

The end result is like Citizen Kane meets Spotlight, but with the empathy completely stripped out in the second half. While Kane was a man who dreamed of power, only to lose everything but gain my empathy, Ailes dreamed of power, lost everything, and ruined the state of American media and women’s lives along the way. Even though it’s been over a year since Ailes passed away, he has casted such a sprawling shadow over Fox News and media networks that his influence and legacy will remain. The Story of Roger Ailes may be straightforward and a bit lacking in stylistic direction, but it’s a rather necessary look at one man’s life to help understand today’s politics.

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Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes was released in the US on December 7, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.