Dark Money

For her sophomore feature, director Kimberly Reed (Prodigal Sons) returns again to her home state of Montana to craft one of the most illuminating, energizing, non-partisan political documentaries of the past twenty years. “Dark Money” is a term that describes the anonymous funds that corporations, unions, and individuals funnel through non-profit organizations or PACs to influence elections. While there is a common misconception that the problem of Dark Money began with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case, there can be no doubt that the use of this unaccountable cash has exploded since that ruling. 

Several factors make Montana a fascinating case study with which to explore this vital national issue. First, there’s Montana’s long history with corporate influence in state and local politics.  Around the turn of the previous century, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company had dominated state government, and the company’s evisceration of local mining regulations resulted in an environmental catastrophe the state is still grappling with.  In 1912, Montana citizens reacted in dramatic fashion by voting to ban big money in state politics.  Second, Montana is a sparsely populated state where all politics really is local, and representatives of both parties maintain their day jobs while in office. Reed interviews scores of current and former state politicians who continue to work as farmers, teachers, clerks, delivery men, etc.  But while Montana voters had, for a century, kept at bay the undue financial influence of lobbyists, national political organizations, and outside business interests via the state’s strict campaign finance laws, the effects of propaganda, organized disinformation, and attack ads have once again been successfully clouding the Big Sky state as much as any other over the past few election cycles.

Reed’s access to seemingly everyone in her home state astounds, and the stories people tell her are passionate, personal, and free of any of the simpleminded talking points we hear over and over in mainstream media. And because so many of Montana’s recent Dark Money-funded smear campaigns went after people on both sides of the aisle, the film achieves a red/blue balance that’s virtually unthinkable in contemporary political documentaries. The movie should cause left-wing viewers—who make up the majority of PBS, Netflix, and theatrical documentary devouring audiences—to fall in love with the salt-of-the-earth Republicans in Montana, who are outraged by the shameless interference in their elections by nameless billionaires. These shadowy funding groups have successfully unseated several well-respected office holders of both parties in Montana, and Reed explains how that happened through multiple sources and techniques.

The film’s non-partisan approach; the focused passion of the voters, journalists, and politicos it chronicles; and a visual elegance that one doesn’t expect from this kind of talking head / archive video footage documentary, all combine to make Dark Money one of the year’s best pictures. And Reed, whose début feature, Prodigal Sons (2008), was such a raw, homemade, personal documentary, proves she can also handle complex, sprawling subject matter with lucidity and gravitas. She and co-writer/editor Jay Arthur Sterrenberg expertly weave together a vast amount of information, interview subjects, and storylines, while mixing the reserved perspective of patient, long-form journalists with the storytelling flair of political thriller novelists.

NOTE: In the interest of the full transparency this movie advocates for, it should be disclosed that I supported this project through a non-profit organization I'm part of that grants funds to all kinds of documentary films every year.