A couple of weeks after the contentious 2016 presidential election, Ike Barinholtz was still trying to gather his thoughts, trying to find a creative outlet for his frustration.
He didn’t realize that his biggest satirical inspiration for The Oath, which marks the actor’s directorial debut, would come from within his own family.
“That Thanksgiving, we were at my house. After dinner, there was a little bit of whiskey flowing, and my mother, my brother and I got into this argument,” Barinholtz said during a recent stop in Dallas. “It got a little heated, but the thing that struck me about it is that we were all, more or less, on the same side. If this is happening in this house, where we’re all relatively aligned, then what on earth is going on at other holiday tables around the country?”
In the film, Barinholtz plays Chris, whose outspoken lefty views clash with many of his relatives arriving for Thanksgiving dinner, leaving his wife (Tiffany Haddish) to play referee amid the dysfunctional family chaos.
The primary point of contention is a titular document sent to all Americans, forcing them to pledge their loyalty to the unnamed president — we’ll just guess who they’re referencing — which Chris refuses to sign. The ensemble comedy also stars Billy Magnussen, Max Greenfield, John Cho, Nora Dunn, and Jay Duplass.
“I knew I wanted to do a story that took place around that week of Thanksgiving, which is already tense, and then layer in this big looming political problem that’s dividing the country,” Barinholtz said. “I wanted it to be about America and how families are coping, but I just knew that it would have to be funny.”
So in his screenplay, Barinholtz (Blockers) worked to express his feelings about contemporary politics through exaggerated levity instead of wallowing in righteous indignation.
“We are living in absurd times. People’s brains are breaking because we’re not used to behavior like this,” he said. “You have to make fun of it and laugh about it, otherwise you’ll become swallowed up in a hole of stress and anger. The political climate we’re living in has a bipolar kind of quality to it.”
Barinholtz said the intent isn’t to polarize, but to make the characters relatable to moviegoers regardless of family background or political persuasion. He also aimed to capture the Thanksgiving dynamic in a universal way.
“Everyone is stressed, and then they sit down at that table, and they wait for that person to say that thing that they know is going to make them crazy. To not have those conversations around the dinner table requires an incredible amount of discipline,” Barinholtz said. “I don’t think Americans have a whole lot of discipline right now.”
