Contemporary

Rating: 7/10 (23 January 2018)

This is a perfect movie for the Age of Trump in three respects. First, as Harding says at the end of the movie, "There is no such thing as truth; everybody has their own truth." Second, it is the self-pitying tale of a talented prole who found the system rigged against her. Third, the central character turns her feelings of undeserved inferiority into energizing rage before she is undone by moronic underlings. Robbie's Harding is a blue collar Nixon.
Superior acting; Robbie proves that she is far more than this year's blonde, and Janney does a great embittered working class authoritarian. The supporting cast of idiots from the husband on down is maybe written and played a little overbroad, but then people that dumb are walking around out there. The shot in which a man carrying a metal club nevertheless uses his head to smash a locked glass door says it all.
The script claims to be based on interviews with Harding, her mother and her ex-husband. Missing from the list is her self-appointed "bodyguard," Shawn Eckerdt, which is why all the blame for The Incident winds up on him and his minions.