Ben McKenzie channels Frank Capra in his crypto doc, but the government refuses a happy ending

In the heat of the moment, though, fans of Frank Capra may have jumped to a familiar place: the climax of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Just like Everyone’s Lying To You For Money, that film ends with a heartfelt plea to the U.S. government. Jefferson Smith—played to earnest perfection by Jimmy Stewart—filibusters for hours to win over the Senate and expose the corrupt party boss Jim Taylor’s misdeeds. While the film portrays a Washington that has grown distorted and warped by greed, Smith still believes in the American project and that his country could become a genuine bastion of egalitarianism, equality, and justice. As he collapses from exhaustion, his words finally get through to the person who can bring the party boss down, Smith’s mentor Senator Paine. This wayward politician admits to his crimes, Smith is exonerated, and the graft is exposed. A well-earned happy ending. Roll credits.

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington was written by Sidney Buchman, an eventually blacklisted Communist who penned the 1939 film in the context of a New Deal America that had begun to bail the country out of the Great Depression. During an era where people witnessed broken economic systems actually improve, the nation was only one good speech away from mending its ways—according to the movie, anyway. When McKenzie finally gets through his own speech in front of the Senate, it’s life imitating art. It isn’t quite as dramatic as Stewart’s desperate plea, but it’s about as close as you can get. The difference is the effect. 

While several of the senators in attendance seem won over by McKenzie’s words, his statement doesn’t suddenly send a shock through the system, draining crypto’s speculative bubble and causing the government to implement better safeguards to prevent future crashes. McKenzie is the rare celebrity who didn’t jump on the crypto-peddling bandwagon for a few bucks, but that’s not enough to make up for all the Matt Damons and Tom Bradys who did the opposite.

By the time Everyone’s Lying To You For Money was put together, McKenzie clearly knew that this is how it all shook out. Immediately after his grand soliloquy, he reveals how the people he was standing up for really felt: Despite their painful stories about the shame and desperation they went through after a particular grift cleaned them out, many still somehow believe in crypto. They remain so desperate—after financial recessions and the chipping away of a Mr. Smith-era social safety net—for the American Dream to be real, that they have to believe in this magical currency that will take them to the Moon. In Capra’s fiction, a speech could cut through the cynicism and despair; in reality, these forces are simply too entrenched, both in a political system won over by lobbyists and in an American people who have a hard time believing in the “egalitarianism, equality, and justice” that Mr. Smith argued for.

After speaking in front of Congress, McKenzie grapples with this. He looks away from the camera, defeated. “I feel like I was as right as I hoped I would be or more, and yet I had less of an effect,” he says to his wife, Morena Baccarin. “I sort of felt like it would be a movie; [crypto] would just disappear.” But even when structured like a familiar film, reality doesn’t unfold like an optimistic screenplay—the political fantasy of 1939 has only become less tangible in the subsequent 90 years. Yet both films still say something about their country with their ending speeches. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington captured the hope of an America on the upswing, while Everyone’s Lying To You For Money drives home the desperation of the moment.