The first time Annette Bening visits the White House in Rob Reiner’s political comedy, The American President, she tells the security guard that she feels like she’s in a Frank Capra film. The tribute to the director of It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Meet John Doe is no accident: Capra embodied the hope of New Deal America, which emerged from the Great Depression with the wounds of poverty and displacement not yet fully healed, the ghosts of the harvest bums still haunting the backroads of America. Though best known for romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally, Reiner was also a great political filmmaker, a late 20th-century Frank Capra. Revisiting his films while Donald Trump’s blunders dominate the headlines is an experience as unsettling as it is comforting.
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