To the End Review - Rachel Lear’s Follow Up to Knock Down the House Is an Instant Skip

In May of 2019, Netflix released Knock Down the House, a political documentary following the 2018 congressional primary campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush, and Paula Jean Swearengin, four progressive Democrats endorsed by Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress who ran in that year's midterm elections.

That Friday, I watched the documentary along with Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile and Velvet Buzzsaw, which was also released that week. From what I remember of the documentary, I loved it for being the rare political documentary that didn't try to push party political ideals onto the viewer, showing each candidate's good and bad sides. I liked it so much that I ranked it my 39th favorite film (including shorts) out of 107, and it was my third favorite documentary behind Apollo 11 and The Day We Walked On the Moon.

So, it's pretty reasonable to assume that my expectations for To the End, a pseudo-sequel to Knock Down the House, would be high. Unfortunately, I am sad to report that those expectations were too lofty and unfounded. For all the marketing this as a sequel of sorts, it's not quite that. Yes, it features Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once again. However, the focus is less on her and more divided between Varshini Prakash from the Sunrise Movement, Alexandra Rojas from the action group Justice Democrats, and Rhiana Gunn-Wright of the Roosevelt Institute and co-author of the Green New Deal policy document.

However, it's not the lofty expectations I've placed upon the documentary that hampered my experience of To the End. Instead, it's Rachel Lears serving as director, producer, and cinematographer. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, Lears has completely forgotten what made Knock Down the House great.

From the opening to the end, she gives little to no context for the viewer to follow along with the Green New Deal movement, leaving them confused about the movement's motivations and how it began. What's even worse is that Lears doesn't give the viewer evidence for why the viewer should support the Green New Deal. It's lazy filmmaking at best and is an irresponsible way to present the movement to those unfamiliar.

Even worse, Lears knows this isn't the way to tell a political narrative in a documentary, as evidenced in her previous documentary Knock Down the House. She even shows that she knows better than to do this in the third act of To the End, where she stops to showcase the effects of doing nothing about climate change, with Gunn-Wright giving a speech about how "the cost is not nothing."

There are even glimmers where Lears showcases the issues with the Green New Deal with a montage of critics of the policy, highlighting the false equivalency of comparing the policy to Roosevelt's New Deal, a clip of a volunteer saying, "They start critiquing your strategy. How're you gonna win? What's your strategy? Is it realistic? Can we win? Who cares if we can win, man?! We just love packing boxes! You take things step by step…", catching various leaders in multiple moments of clearly stating that they want to push out leadership simply because they disagree with them, and generally misunderstanding criticism for attacks on them personally. However, these moments are few and far between, as these criticisms are never addressed in any meaningful way.

Lear's goal of documenting the Green New Deal movement fails in every conceivable way. There's no information to convince those unfamiliar with the featured subjects to inspire viewers to research the topic after the documentary. In addition, Lears doesn't provide a deep enough look at both sides of the issue, unlike her previous documentary, Knock Down the House. My recommendation would be to skip this documentary entirely.

★

To The End is now available in movie theaters.

Until next time!

Thanks to Thomas Stoneham-Judge from Movies For Reel, Shane Conto, Joseph Davis, David Walters, Ambula Bula, Matthew Simpson, Thom Blackburn, and Beatrice AKA Shakesqueer, for supporting Austin B Media on Patreon!