Divide and Conquer: The roger Ailes story (Alexis Bloom, 2018): USA

Reviewed by: Matthew Dagenais, AFI Film Festival, Hollywood, CA

Alexis Bloom the director of this film; Divide & Conquer: The Roger Ailes Story, did an outstanding job putting together this documentary to truly portray the image of the man behind Fox News and the so called “King of Media”, Roger Ailes.

The way Ms. Bloom used a close up shot of Roger in what appears to be Roger standing on a podium type of monument laughing, smiling, scolding, really added an element of power to the image of Roger.  This shot would be used every time an individual was being interviewed about Roger or the narrator was describing an important detail about him or reiterating a story.  The interviews conducted for the documentary were of individuals who had previously worked for Roger and they all had one thing in common to say about him, that he was a very powerful man.  One man describes how at many events related to Fox News or anything to do with Roger had a special list of people, that list was called the F.O.R list, Friends of Roger and if you were on that list you were considered extra special in a way. Another lady describes a very dark side of Roger where she claims that he asked her for a sexual favour in a way and when she respectfully declined the offer she found herself on a No Hire list that was created by Roger. A lot of women testify to this and eventually some even started coming out and saying Roger had asked way worse things of them and their careers were threatened if they didn’t comply. This eventually led to the dismal of Roger Ailes at Fox News for sexual allegations and harassment.

It was very interesting to learn about Roger Ailes through this documentary as I had no prior knowledge about him or his relations to so many individuals including Rupert Murdoch.  I was intrigued to learn that Rupert Murdoch helped fund and build Rogers first show “Americas Talking” and Fox News, and was a close assailant of Roger.  It was crazy to see the concepts at which Roger based his media around, he really only cared about the ratings and did not care about real news at all.  It was almost a hidden talent he was blessed with upon birth, the ability to make people want to watch something and like it.  The craziest part of all of this and the most surprising aspect of the documentary and Rogers life to me at least was the fact that he worked on 3 Republican presidential campaigns as their Media advisor, first Nixon, than Bush, and most recently Mr. Donald Trump. It was amazing to see the power this man had in making viewable, entertaining, media. It was said that during the second Nixon campaign Roger pulled his greatest stunt ever, The Area Debate with Richard Nixon.  Where Nixon faced a panel of voters for questions.  Roger however set up this speech based off some research he did about Adolph Hitler and he has found that Hitler always looked so powerful in film because of certain technical aspects and film tricks such as angles.  He called these power angles. It is amazing to think that one man could have influenced a population of millions to vote for an individual, just through the use of a few tricks and a television.