“An explosive and exhilarating satire that feels completely and uniquely Canadian”

Playing at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival in its Midnight Madness program, where it has won the section’s People’s Choice Award, is the latest film from singular auteur filmmaker Matthew Rankin, Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney. The film dissects the rise of Progressive Conservative politician Brian Mulroney as he ascends from being a relatively unknown party member to Prime Minister in 1984. Rankin’s idiosyncratic style and voice create a documentary that is far from didactic, instead making it an explosive and exhilarating satire that feels completely and uniquely Canadian.

The film is divided into many segments, with most separating different periods in Canadian political history. It opens at the 1976 Progressive Conservative leadership convention, where Mulroney is campaigning to become leader of his party. Many clips are shown of other political figures of the era, including former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who in archival footage claims that he does not even know who Mulroney is. Mulroney battles Claude Wagner at the convention, but is portrayed as being too wealthy and out of touch. Neither candidate wins, and instead Joe Clark takes the leadership of the party.

Over the next several segments of the film, Mulroney withdraws from the political spotlight and works in the private sector while Clark’s leadership of the Progressive Conservatives is explored. Clark struggles to perform well in elections following his victory to become prime minister in 1979, while the film also covers his battles with Liberal Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau and John Turner and the consistent rejection of the Progressive Conservative Party in Quebec. Much of the film highlights the separatist movement in Quebec during these decades and links it to Mulroney’s political rise, as he would eventually return to politics and become the first Progressive Conservative leader from Quebec to become prime minister from his party when his party wins the 1984 election.

While all of this feels like it could be a lesson in politics, it becomes something completely different in the hands of Rankin. Rankin’s prior feature films include Universal Language (2024) and The Twentieth Century (2019). Brian Mulroney is certainly modeled in the vein of The Twentieth Century, which is a surrealist fictional black comedy portraying the rise to power of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Unlike The Twentieth Century, Brian Mulroney is a documentary, and Rankin does not have as much leeway in how he develops the story. However, both films are black comedies that satirize not just portions of Canadian politics, but also Canadian history and culture.

Both films are also often extremely hilarious and surreal, but with Brian Mulroney Rankin uses archival news footage, political advertisements, television nostalgia, and other clips from the time periods to tell the story. He often dramatizes and edits portions of the footage, overly exaggerating certain stories and creating running gags. There is a political advertisement in which Rankin changes the subjects’ eyes turn into blue lasers in order to satirize the footage of the Progressive Conservative’s party attempt to gain a foothold in Quebec, and he continues to run the joke multiple times in the film. There is also a segment on Prime Minister John Turner, where Rankin edits multiple clips together to make Turner seem completely incompetent. Another gag takes place during the same period at a national debate between Mulroney and Turner, where New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent is also participating. Rankin edits the debate to show the contempt the media has for third parties, making fun of the short amount of time Broadbent has to answer questions by editing down Broadbent’s answers to make it appear as if he only had seconds to speak.

Brian Mulroney may seem like a film that is inaccessible to those who are not interested in politics and to non-Canadians. However, the film becomes exhilarating. I’m not Canadian, and at first it took me about twenty minutes to get used to the characters and their dynamics, but once that clicked, the power of the film became gripping. For a documentary of this sort, it becomes intellectually stimulating and electrifying once Mulroney and the other political figures become familiar. Importantly, if a viewer has any grasp on political structures and power, there will be much overlap with political institutions and comparative politics from other countries; at one point, while the film is uniquely Canadian, it can transcend and feel universal. 

Rankin also edits the film, and his tremendous editing may be one of the most important aspects of the film. As noted previously, his gags, splicing of political clips, and impeccable timing are extremely important to the film’s ability to captivate. Importantly, the editing also adds much depth to the film. Because there is so much going on on the screen, Brian Mulroney feels like a film that could reveal even more on a second viewing, once the cast of political players and the historical context are already familiar. 

With Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, Matthew Rankin has taken what could have been a straightforward documentary about a Canadian politician and transformed it into something much stranger, funnier, and more surreal. The result is a film that demands attention to both its history and its filmmaking, with Rankin taking decades of political history and archival footage and creating an invigorating and uniquely Canadian film.