The new doc­u­men­tary What’s the Mat­ter With Kansas? is a fun­ny, smart and impor­tant look at the inter­sec­tion of reli­gion and pol­i­tics in Amer­i­ca today. Loose­ly based on the 2004 book by Thomas Frank, it tells the sto­ries of sev­er­al con­ser­v­a­tive Kansans who care deeply about hot-but­ton cul­tur­al issues like abor­tion and gay mar­riage. Accord­ing to Frank’s polem­i­cal the­sis, Repub­li­cans suc­ceed­ed in get­ting poor whites to vote against their own eco­nom­ic self-inter­est by focus­ing on these issues.

How­ev­er, film­mak­ers Lau­ra Cohen and Joe Win­ston devote lit­tle of the film’s 90 min­utes to Frank and his argu­ment, focus­ing instead on the lives and motives of their sub­jects. The doc­u­men­tary begins by fol­low­ing a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­vass­er who vis­its the home of a Repub­li­can who explains that he could nev­er sup­port the Democ­rats because they’re ​“pro-abor­tion, pro-homo­sex­u­al, pro-gun con­trol.” Then it shifts to a mar­ket where the Kansas Democ­rats booth can’t attract a crowd, while the ​“Choose Life” booth is busy sign­ing up recruits and sell­ing plas­tic babies for 25 cents.

Frank’s book and this movie are both vul­ner­a­ble to accu­sa­tions of con­de­scend­ing elit­ism, Frank for his the­sis and the movie for its focus on the eccen­tric Kansas per­son­al­i­ties. To be sure, the film some­times pro­vokes laugh­ter at its sub­jects’ expense, such as on the Bar­den family’s trip to the always-ridicu­lous Cre­ation Muse­um in Peters­burg, Ky. Still, the depth of the con­nec­tion that devel­ops between the sub­jects and film­mak­ers – and, even­tu­al­ly, the audi­ence – stops this from being mere mockery.

In the hands of some­one deter­mined to ridicule con­ser­v­a­tives, Angel Dillard’s CD release par­ty, fea­tur­ing per­for­mances of such tracks as ​“When Satan Comes A‑Callin’”, would make an easy tar­get. But that scene comes late in the film, after we’ve learned to under­stand her as a per­son rather than as a stereo­type. As Joe Win­ston not­ed in the Q&A that fol­lowed a Chica­go screen­ing, ​“This movie’s all about not gen­er­al­iz­ing about people.”

The movie briefly traces the his­to­ry of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment in Kansas, which blos­somed in 1991 dur­ing the anti-abor­tion ​“Sum­mer of Mer­cy” block­ades in Wichi­ta. Mark Giet­zen recalls how he recruit­ed peo­ple there to run for precinct com­mit­tee­man, and an over­whelm­ing num­ber won. By 1994, pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Dan Glick­man lost. He was beat­en, he says, by ​“peo­ple who had nev­er been involved in pol­i­tics.” Glick­man reports that he did best in the high-income, Repub­li­can parts of his district.

It wasn’t all about abor­tion. Glick­man was also hurt by his pro-NAF­TA stance. Dale Swen­son, a union work­er, recalls, ​“I thought, ​‘Well, there’s noth­ing left for me to vote for in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.’ ” This point is the oth­er part of Frank’s argu­ment: Repub­li­cans may be fool­ing work­ing- and mid­dle-class vot­ers with the cul­ture wars, but Democ­rats are equal­ly respon­si­ble for their loss­es by refus­ing to stand up for eco­nom­ic val­ues. Oth­ers in the doc­u­men­tary have a sim­i­lar view, such as Kansas Farm­ers Union pres­i­dent Donn Teske, who resigned from the Repub­li­can Par­ty but notes, ​“I’m a pop­ulist with­out a party.”

What’s the Mat­ter With Kansas? doesn’t ful­ly answer the ques­tion in its title. But it pro­vides a fun­ny, in-depth analy­sis of the inter­sec­tions between reli­gion, eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics. It’s a movie that needs to be seen in both red and blue states, by lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives alike.