A Storm Foretold

“Saving Western civilisation is hard work,” complains Roger Stone, only half-jokingly, with that twinkle in his eyes that might make him easy to like if one were not the type to pay attention. Watching Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s documentary, one can feel the moments when the filmmaker is drawn to him despite knowing better. Stone has a companionable quality which makes the casual way in which he discards people who are no longer useful to him all the more painful. It never seems to have occurred to him that one day he might be on the receiving end.

Filmed during the dying days of Donald Trump’s presidency, the film is assembled from a mixture of interviews, observations and reflections on Guldbrandsen’s part, the latter made during those moments when he finds himself out in the cold. Stone is one of those people who likes to reassure himself of his own power by giving hostages to fortune in the course of casual conversation, adding quick retractions when he thinks better of it, throwing in phrases like “I’m joking, of course,” after particularly bitter tirades. He also like to give little lectures about the nature of power, as if perceiving himself as a mentor to the Dane, who sticks closely to his side and doesn’t bother to let him know when his assumptions about the camera or microphone being off are incorrect. It’s a relationship based on mutual exploitation, Guldbrandsen says, and “it’s complicated.”

Stone’s life is complicated at this point. He knows Trump is in trouble, and is trying every trick in the book to keep him in power, but Trump himself isn’t willing to stick to the playbook, having developed his own ideas about what brought him to power and might keep him there. Knowing he might lose, Stone begins making plans to deal with that situation, and a good deal is captured here that might make viewers wonder about the depth of his responsibility for the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January 2021. We also follow him through his troubles with the Robert Mueller Special Counsel investigation, which sees him faced with charges of witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements.

Most viewers will already know what happened next, but that doesn’t make this any less compelling to watch. For people unfamiliar with the story, it will feel like a thriller, Guldbrandsen managing the tension beautifully. The mercenary nature of Stone’s approach is established early on in a conversation which reveals that members of the public are being paid to accuse Bill Clinton of rape on television, and to wear t-shirts accusing him of rape. No consideration is spared either for the legal position this puts them in or for the potential impact on any rape survivors who might be watching. It’s clear at every stage that Stone recognises the vulnerability of the people he is manipulating but simply doesn’t care. After he is charged, a crowd of them stand around chanting “Roger Stone did nothing wrong,” in unison, as if, by doing so, they can shape reality itself, not merely the perception of it. It feels more like a religious rite than a show of political allegiance.

Stone speaks, always, to his base. He continually refers to Guldbrandsen and his team as Communists, which, of course, sounds ridiculous to people elsewhere in the world. When the filmmaker has a serious health scare, he makes jibes about Denmarks’s “socialist healthcare system” which make him sound clueless, but will no doubt please followers who have already bought into a different take on reality. His openness about the manufacture of conspiracy theories is reminiscent of certain of the ramblings of L Ron Hubbard.

“There are not even any moderate Republican votes anymore,” Stone reflects at one point, aware of how far things have gone. He’s keen to emphasise how close he is to Trump, name dropping wherever he can. Trump is obsessed with Sunset Boulevard, he says, but it’s not long before we hear that film tellingly misquoted. When it starts to become all too plain that Trump is ignoring him – whilst continuing to use the slogans he came up with – he loses his temper. There is, in the end, something almost innocent about him – a failure to understand why social codes exist and real surprise when he discovers that he, too, depended on them.

These are the moments when the film is at its most interesting. Anyone who follows US politics will have seen the brash, flashy Stone before. They may also have seen the aggression which emerges when he’s on the back foot. What Guldbrandsen captures is something else. The game may not be up for Stone as yet – we’ll have to wait and see – but somewhere along the line, we see him grasp the fact that one day it might be, and that that could happen at any time. Behind the bravado there is a hint of limitless existential terror. The moment will come when he’s just not very important anymore.