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Despite being mesmerized by its hero, McDonald’s chain founder Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), the film is horrified by the manner in which he built his empire. It’s wonderful to have that kind of ambivalence; in fact, it’s a hallmark of good drama. However, there are far too many instances in which “The Founder” resembles a business-drama version of the problem identified by Francois Truffaut in his work on war films: it’s difficult to make a truly anti-war film because war is inherently cinematic, and when you show it, people become swept up in the action regardless of your intentions.
When it comes to business dramas, although the bloodshed is (typically) figurative, the conflict is still thrilling, which means that many films about business end up grappling with Truffaut’s problem of the war movie genre. Despite the fact that shows like “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Wall Street,” “Wolf of Wall Street,” “Boiler Room,” and others are filled with the kinds of people you’d cross a room to avoid, you hear their lines quoted by businesspeople and b-school students as inspirational texts, perhaps because it’s more fun to identify with the bastard who gets things done than it is to identify with the people who suffer as a result of his actions. A smaller-scale version of Gordon Gekko, Ray Kroc is the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. Although the film is appalled by Ray’s shady maneuvers, it still relies on Keaton for every word, which is a testament to how well he portrays him.
Written by Robert Siegel (“The Wrestler”), directed by John Lee Hancock (“The Rookie”), and starring Michael Keaton, Kroc appears to be a parody of the hero Willy Loman from the classic film “Death of a Salesman,” as well as one of the real estate strivers in the film “Glengarry Glen Ross” who claims they can’t close deals because the leads are weak. The film shows him making cold calls to restaurant owners and attempting to sell them mixers out of the trunk of his car, before returning home to receive pep talks from his wife Ethel (Laura Dern). He’s transformed into the Charles Foster Kane of hamburgers by the end of the story, a bland megalomaniac surrounded by enablers and worshipers, ruling a corporation that he built by exploiting the optimism and trust of McDonald’s originators Richard and Maurice McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), who were bought out at a low price and robbed of future royalties after accepting a handshake agreement that Kroc never followed through with.
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The portrayal of the McDonald brothers in “The Founder” is devastating, and it is by far the most powerful aspect of the film. From their decision to allow Kroc to expand into other states to their capitulation to production and profit-making ideas that they fear will turn the restaurant from a profitable but self-contained labor of love into a purveyor of unfrozen beef patties and powdered shakes, every step on their road to ruin is marked and cataloged. As a result of the film’s depiction of the brothers’ relationship as one built on a can-do attitude, when Kroc enters the picture and lavishes praise on their idea for a “fast food” restaurant with an assembly line service model, it’s easy to understand why they would abandon their opposition to his vision of a centralized franchise.
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Even up until the point where legal documents are signed and large sums of money are exchanged, the film portrays Kroc as a dejected jerk on the prowl for one last chance at redemption. It’s no surprise, then, that the McDonald brothers recognized that in him as well, and were moved to help him make his fairy tale (and theirs, since they were unable to establish their own chain) come true. (Offerman and Lynch, two of the best character actors alive, outdo themselves in this scene; each has several close-ups that are so filled with betrayal and regret that even the film is taken aback by their power to convey emotion.)
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Kroc is portrayed in Siegel’s script as the embodiment of a particular way of looking at American business values: always smiling and optimistic, treating capitalism as a pure virtue that does so much good for society that the casualties are rendered insignificant by the benefits. To keep himself motivated while driving, Kroc repeats inspirational quotes from a self-help cassette. He holds them in the same regard as a cleric holds a sacred text in his hands. His exchanges with the other characters are full of formulations that you might expect to hear from the mouth of a cult leader in a movie like this. His remarks are not only bold and startling, but they are also self-serving and cynical, as when he tells the brothers that he wants the McDonald’s logo to be as ubiquitous as the American flag and the cross: “The new American church… We are not only feeding bodies, but also souls.”
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Despite this, Kroc considers himself to be an idealist and myth-maker rather than a huckster, despite his obvious opportunism. He is not a malicious individual who intends to harm others. However, there is a void at his core, which, according to “The Founder,” may be as important a requirement for legendary business success as the perseverance that Kroc is known for praising in his self-help book series. It’s a particularly nimble piece of screenwriting work: Kroc, who claims the McDonalds brothers’ food service concepts as his own and ultimately steals their name, is shown repeating the “perseverance” speech in a business award speech without giving it any credit.
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Because its characters frequently deliver reams of exposition (some of it supported by documentary footage and old photographs) in place of real conversations, “The Founder” suffers from the unfortunate consequence of being a tedious watch at times. When it comes to storytelling, the first third of the film is so densely packed with slide-show sequences that it plays like a celebratory video that could be shown at a convention of McDonald’s franchisees. Because the film struggles to integrate the business story with Kroc’s turbulent personal life—he divorced Ethel in favor of a younger woman named Joan (Linda Cardellini)—the film’s female characters are defined by their level of support for Kroc’s vision rather than any other characteristic. The McDonald brothers are also secondary characters, but they are given a lot of attention and developed as individuals. You can imagine their lives apart from (and before) Kroc, if you try hard enough. That is not the case with Ethel (who, despite Dern’s best efforts, remains a wet blanket) or Joan (who likens Kroc to Alexander the Great not as a warning but as a compliment).
When it comes to the relationship between Kroc and the McDonald brothers, “The Founder” could have been one of the great intimate, sour character studies of recent years if it had concentrated solely on that aspect of the story. When Kroc is on the road acting like a beleaguered Jack Lemmon character, and when his first wife nags him and second-guesses his decisions, it all feels like an attempt to force a three-dimensional, somewhat sympathetic biography into existence despite the fact that the material resists. There’s a nagging feeling that the filmmakers couldn’t help but be swayed by the charisma of Ray Kroc (or Michael Keaton?) throughout the film’s final act, which attempts to visualize a hypnotic emotional void in the vein of “Raging Bull” or “There Will Be Blood” without laying the necessary foundations. It’s possible that this film could have been titled “There Will Be Beef.”
Even so, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about “The Founder” on a regular basis since seeing it. If the film had been sharper, bleaker, and more articulate, it’s possible that it wouldn’t have resonated as strongly as this muddled, self-canceling one. After starting out as an advertisement, it transitions to becoming another, darker kind of advertisement, and one of the most intriguing and surprising things about “The Founder” is that, at the end, it appears to be slightly embarrassed about having allowed this happen. As he did with McDonald’s, Kroc takes the movie away from Hancock and Siegel, just as he did with McDonald’s. I suppose you could say that it took my objections as well. I had a bad taste in my mouth after leaving the theater. Then, for the first time in more than a year, I went to McDonald’s and ordered a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a vanilla shake to take home.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Case For Christ Quiz.
