President Snow – “The Hunger Games”
It has its flaws —the love triangle, a damp squib of a final installment, the bit when Josh Hutcherson disguises himself as a log— but at its best, “The Hunger Games” series wasn’t just a dystopian sci-fi franchise of rare quality, but also one that grappled with real politics in a far more successful way than you might imagine for a so-called YA movie. And that was perhaps best exemplified in its treatment of the arch-villain of the series, President Coriolanus Snow, as played by Donald Sutherland. We get to learn little of his back story or rise to power across the four movies, but we don’t need it: Sutherland, equal parts avuncular grandfather, Serbian warlord, Roman emperor and Stalin, paints a portrait of a man of utter ruthlessness who’ll go to virtually any lengths to keep the have-nots at bay, especially if those lengths involve getting children to kill each other. The character is disturbing in a way that few blockbuster villains are, in part because he’s all too plausible a figure, and in part because of the deep well of sourness inside him. You don’t really get the sense that The Emperor really hates Luke Skywalker, or that Loki hates The Avengers, but any time Sutherland’s on screen with Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss, you see the absolute disgust with which he holds towards her and those like her. But Sutherland finds other notes to play: one of the few highlights of the last film is seeing Snow deposed, and as with so many despots when they’re stripped of the power, you’re left looking at nothing but a rather sad, pathetic madman.
Alfonse Simms in “Moon Over Parador” (1988)
There doesn’t seem to be a lot in common between Trump and Alfonse Simms, dictator of the fictional Parador, except peculiar hair and unnatural skin tone. But in one way, Paul Mazursky‘s otherwise breezy, disposable comedy provides insight into the current political climate: like Ivan Reitman‘s rather better “Dave,” it is founded on the idea that “power” is little more than the performance of power. Richard Dreyfuss plays struggling actor Jack Noah, who gets strong-armed into replacing Simms, the tinpot dictator of a banana republic, after Simms (himself a puppet) dies. The location allows Mazursky, who also co-wrote the film, to run through the Big Hollywood Handbook of Latin America cliches —corrupt military advisers (Raul Julia), tacky palaces, starving peasants, “communist” guerillas and impossibly curvaceous, sexually rapacious, manipulative mistresses who turn out to be both politically aware and morally courageous. Ok, there’s only one of those, Simm’s mistress, named Madonna, which is funny since she’s played by Sonia Braga channeling Evita Peron. The film has its flaws, not least its flashback structure which robs it of suspense, and its satire lacks the bite of other Mazursky titles, but it’s almost accidentally incisive about how in politics the clothes (and hair, and make up) make the man. It demonstrates the ease with which someone who has never earned it can rise in influence, simply by walking and talking in a certain way. And it builds to a gruesome prospect, one with more potential for both comedy and horror than Mazursky explores: the guy who wields power (propped up in this case by a shamocracy ) is not a cackling madman, but only an empty vessel —an actor rapidly getting bored with his role.
The White Witch – “The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe” (2005)
As with their real-life equivalents, onscreen despots are overwhelmingly male, due to centuries of power imbalance between the genders, and also because men are literally the worst. But sticking up for women in the cinematic dictator world (joined more recently by Julianne Moore as President Coin in “The Hunger Games,” though she barely got enough time in power to really qualify) is The White Witch from the “Narnia” franchise, and most notably the first of the films, “The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.” As played by Tilda Swinton in a rare blockbuster appearance, the Witch (or Jadis, as she’s known to her friends) has been ruling over the magical kingdom of Narnia for many years, causing an endless winter to fall over the world (and worse, no Christmas!). She’s enslaved many of the creatures that populate the land, including wolves, dwarves and minotaurs, and turned many of her enemies to stone. A classic dictator in many ways, and thanks to Swinton, we see her seductive charisma as she wins over Edmund (one of the four children who’ve accidentally traveled to Narnia) with turkish delights and flattery, but her vicious side is never far from the screen. The Narnia movies were never that great, feeling cheap and overlit in many cases (and unable to overcome the preachiness of the source material), but whenever Swinton was onscreen, with her beehive dreads and polar-bear chariot, she provides the films with a villain far more intimidating than anything rival fantasy franchises “Lord Of The Rings” and “Harry Potter” could offer.
