Critic Reviews

The result is a compelling but chilling film, one that is inevitably disheartening and disturbing as it details both how Ailes came to understand the nature and power of fear and how he honed his craft until he could sell fear to his fellow citizens like it was going out of style.

It conveys a credible sense of Ailes’s psychology through the testimony of peers and co-workers who witnessed his ruthlessness firsthand.

In the piercing and perceptive documentary Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, it’s fascinating, in an outrageous and distressing way, to witness the moment when Ailes transformed the nation’s political landscape virtually overnight.

What emerges is a portrait of a man whose fall was precipitous but whose sensibility and techniques outlive him and continue to evolve. This is the acid test for a good journalistic documentary: No matter how far back it reaches, Divide and Conquer always feels as if it’s in the present tense.

A well-researched and richly observant documentary from Alexis Bloom about the climate of lies and systemic abuse that nurtured Ailes and allowed his behavior to flourish.

Alexis Bloom’s keenly insightful and deeply depressing documentary is probably best viewed not as a record of the past but a document of what’s to come.

“Divide” is a damning film, with just enough new material to entice the curious.

Ultimately, Divide and Conquer offers useful lessons — and maybe even a little hope — for people on both sides of the national divide, about just how we came to this terrible, but not irreversible, place.

"Divide and Conquer” illustrates the similarities between Ailes and Trump so well that the documentary’s happy ending can’t help but leave behind a queasy aftertaste: Ailes may be dead, but he’s still the most powerful man in the world.

It’s naive to blame the current cancerous state of American politics on a single carcinogen, but don’t let that stop you from pointing fingers at Roger Ailes.