That title read just as oddly back then, too, with The Undefeated arriving after the McCain-Palin ticket lost the 2008 race and before Palin had declined to run for president in the 2012 election. That VP campaign, however, comes across as almost an afterthought in the two-hour movie, which instead focuses, in sometimes excruciating detail, on Palin’s Alaska past and her potential future with the tea party, using excerpts from Palin’s own Going Rogue audiobook and interviews with various supporters in lieu of speaking with Palin herself.

It’s a long advertisement for something that didn’t happen. And the opening montage — which combines derisive comments from the likes of David Letterman, Louis C.K., Pamela Anderson, and Matt Damon with hateful Facebook posts about Palin — makes it clear that the movie’s less concerned with political triumph. It’d rather generate rage at adversaries, whether they be from Hollywood, the media, or the Republican Party ("I see eunuchs," the late Andrew Breitbart spits at GOP figures who didn’t come to Palin’s defense). In other words, it attempts to tell the story of a winner being beset by haters and losers, but, you know, classy.

In his 2015 profile of Bannon in Bloomberg, Joshua Green notes that Breitbart “described Bannon, with sincere admiration, as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement,” which is quite a compliment, given that Riefenstahl was a master propagandist for the Nazi Party. Riefenstahl, at least, is generally (if begrudgingly) regarded as a skilled, influential filmmaker. The cinema du Steve Bannon as exemplified in The Undefeated, on the other hand, feels less like film and more like a method to implant ideas into a viewer’s head by way of blunt force. The omnipresent score is grim when Palin’s being criticized and soaring when she isn’t, with the final half hour swelling so steadily it seems like it should be at shrieking levels by the time the credits roll.

The film cuts up its interviews and archival footage with a free-association jamboree of cats hissing, treacherous avalanches, medieval soldiers shot by arrows, and lions stalking and eating a zebra. Literal dollar bills are cut up, lit on fire, and flushed down a toilet every time public spending is discussed. Any hint of criticism directed toward America is paired with footage of generic home movies of families together, heartland flyovers, and postwar celebrations, stopping just short of someone spitting in an apple pie. The movie doesn’t feature subliminal messaging; it’s apparently styled to simply evoke it. Bannon futzes with the resolution of and zooms into anti-Palin footage to indicate that it should be frowned upon, and splices in evocative imagery in ways meant to guide emotions. He gradually shifts his interest from his subject as a person to his subject as a canvas onto which he can project, a filmmaking strategy that can be just as easily exported into a political one.

The Undefeated is nakedly manipulative, but like all of Bannon’s films (and like partisan docs of all leanings), it isn’t meant to recruit converts to its point of view about Palin, the tea party, or the conservative groundswell it’s counting on. There’s no conversation to be had — it’s meant primarily for viewers who want their beliefs affirmed. And in that, at least Bannon’s work is perfect for the age of Trump — it signals so broadly how it wants its audience to feel that there’s no need to pay attention to what’s being said.