‘Hamilton’ on the big screen is the most political film of the year

You’d be hard-pressed to find any greater pop-culture rebuke of the anti-immigrant, anti-DEI messages promulgated by the Trump administration than in the big-screen spectacle of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “Hamilton” as it plays in theaters for the first time.

On opening night Friday at Hollywood’s historic El Capitan Theatre, devoted fans donned powdered wigs and Colonial coats and belted out every song along with the cast. “Immigrants, we get the job done,” was, of course, the biggest applause line of the night.

The line always gets a huge roar, but it hits differently in a city in the midst of ongoing ICE raids. The entire show, for that matter, resonates at a higher pitch in 2025 when the government is eliminating diversity efforts at arts institutions and universities across the country. There is a reason, after all, that the creators of “Hamilton” pulled an upcoming engagement of the musical at the Kennedy Center after Trump fired its board members and installed himself chairman, all the while claiming that the organization was too “woke.”

“At its heart, ‘Hamilton’ celebrates American diversity,” Miranda said in a statement to The Times in March about his decision. “The recent shift in the Kennedy Center’s ideology and board leadership has made it untenable for a production like ‘Hamilton’ to celebrate and be celebrated there today.”

The genius of Miranda’s “Hamilton,” which first premiered off-Broadway at New York’s Public Theater in 2015, was that he told the story of the country’s Founding Fathers using a cast made up almost entirely of actors of color. Miranda, who is of Puerto Rican descent, played Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. was Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson was George Washington and Daveed Diggs was Thomas Jefferson.

The music was vibrant, historically fortified hip-hop. The rich performances were flush with emotion, and the actors’ words ebbed and flowed on lyrical waves of Democratic ideals. In Miranda’s “Hamilton” audiences saw what America could be if it were truly an egalitarian, enlightened society unhindered by the ugly racism that scarred it from the very start.

Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Trump has established a task force to organize a full year of festivities culminating in a grand celebration on the National Mall for the Fourth of July. But Trump’s plans extend beyond marking the occasion — he wants to transform the complex narrative that has evolved over many decades about the ugly role slavery played in the country’s founding and its rise to world dominance.

To that end, Trump is in the midst of a pressure campaign against the Smithsonian Institution — claiming that it puts too much focus on “how bad slavery was” and directing Vice President JD Vance to root out “divisive, race-centered ideology” from its 21 museums. One of the first casualties of Trump’s crusade against DEI was the Smithsonian’s office of diversity, which closed soon after he took office.

Seeing “Hamilton” on the big screen — with its powerful Black Washington and anti-slavery ideals — amplifies its message of inclusivity the way that only a darkened movie theater filled with cheering people can. “Hamilton” was made for the stage, but it has taken on a towering cultural resonance that allows it to thrive onscreen. Urgency is added to the words delivered by beloved actors who loom larger than life in flickering projector light. Plus, you can watch it in the movie theater for a fraction of what it costs to see it onstage, lowering the barrier to entry.

“Hamilton” tells the story of the Founding Father, beginning before the Revolutionary War and ending with his untimely death at the hands of Jefferson’s vice president, Burr, during an early-morning duel in New Jersey.

Hamilton was born out of wedlock on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies. He was later orphaned and immigrated to the North American colonies in 1772. Poor and deeply ambitious, he rose to become a military officer in the Revolutionary War, and later, the nation’s first secretary of the treasury under Washington. He advocated for the abolition of slavery, but like many of the Founding Fathers, he also benefited from the institution and even bought and sold slaves for his in-laws.

The story of Hamilton is the story of America: a country that achieved superpower status largely because it was a place welcoming of immigrants, where anybody willing to work hard enough could become whatever they wanted — even president of the United States — cronyism be damned.

Or so the story goes. The narratives of Black, brown and Indigenous people, as well as of women, LGBTQ+ and disabled people, many of whom were enslaved, denigrated, murdered and otherwise made unwelcome, were largely erased in the legend surrounding the country’s founding.

Through its structure, casting, music and lyrics, “Hamilton” interrogates the dominant, whitewashed narrative of America. It succeeds because it isn’t a message coated in a musical — it is an organic exploration of the stories that have come to define us. One of its most compelling lyrics is, “you have no control: who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” “Hamilton” feels politically explosive because politics are baked into it by virtue of its subject matter, not added after the fact. It illustrates the great promise of a messy, fledgling democracy striving to achieve a certain kind of equality and to establish a new form of government responsive to the will of its people.

Two hundred fifty years in, the American experiment has gone horribly awry, although there is plenty of controversy surrounding the “why” of it. Trump and his acolytes would like to return the country to its mythical roots, seemingly wiping out any discussion of the injustices that plagued its founding and growth over the centuries.

“Hamilton” is arriving on the big screen just in time to remind audiences that there is another way.