Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
If you have no interest whatsoever in reliving last year’s election, that’s totally understandable. The results of Election Day 2016 were emotional for many people for many different reasons, and if for some reason you’re feeling a little fuzzy about how it all went down, it’s been chronicled in documentary form. That’s right. 11/8/16, a documentary created and produced by Jeff Deutchman, depicts the hours that saw millions of unsuspecting Americans wake up on November 8, 2016 with very different expectations from what actually went down. This may not sound like an ideal way to spend your time, but the film is so unabashedly human that it’s worth reliving some trauma for.
This fascinating survey documentary, one that follows some 16 Americans and their families from around the country on Election Day, does not shy away from the shocking, occasionally ugly truths of this historic event. These citizens range from a felon unable to vote to a Sikh cab driver, a New England dad who proudly wears his “Make America Great Again” hat, third-party voters, and people of varying ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds. We get a look inside people’s homes and jobs, what they spend their time doing while lines form outside of the voting centers, and even inside the Javitts Center, where Hillary Clinton‘s would-be victory party had drawn thousands of people.
It’s easy nowadays to get caught up in all the drama that tears us apart, but here, we are made privy to more than one viewpoint, and while we might disagree with these people, they are shown as humans. There’s no one caricature of Donald Trump voters like the ones we’ve become used to, which contributes to the documentary’s overall impartial feeling. Sure, there are people that sound ignorant or make comments that may offend one group or another, but that speaks to the honesty at play here. More than anything, it’s truly compelling to watch how relieved all these people are after voting. The election cycle was an exhausting one for everyone, and at the end of the day, we all just want to return to some semblance of normalcy. (Whether or not we’ve achieved that is another matter entirely, but still.)
You may not agree with every subject you encounter, but you’d be hard-pressed not to empathize. While taking in 11/8/16 in our current political climate might feel like a traumatic endeavor, it truly is a fascinating snapshot of America, of how we got to where we are now and where we go from here.
