The Movie Myths That Shaped Steve Bannon’s View of America

One of Steve Bannon’s favorite movies, as he repeatedly reminds viewers during the documentary American Dharma, is Twelve O’Clock High, Henry King’s searing 1949 World War II film about a down-on-their-luck group of bomber pilots who are whipped into fighting shape by the stern General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck). Bannon is entranced by Savage’s bluntness in the face of danger. On taking command, Savage barks at his men, “I don’t have a lot of patience with this, ‘What are we fighting for?’ stuff. We’re in a war, a shooting war. We’ve got to fight. And some of us have got to die.”

That chilling pragmatism, wrapped up in a deep sense of duty, is part of what Bannon dubs as Savage’s “dharma,” some , which played at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, is not really trying to get a cogent philosophy out of its subject. Instead, the film looks at how Bannon—who served as the chief strategist to President Donald Trump and as the executive chairman of —sees himself in America’s pop-culture heroes of yesteryear while casting the right-wing movement he’s a part of as profoundly patriotic.