Regarded as a politically radical firebrand as much as a courageous filmmaker, Oliver Stone is one of the monolithic voices of contemporary Hollywood—a figure about whom opinion tends to be divided starkly between suspicion and adulation, with little room for ambivalence in between. As a veteran of the Vietnam War whose Bronze Star and Purple Heart belie a profound disillusionment with his experience there, Stone has devoted most of his directorial career depicting events of the 1960s and 70s, paying particular attention to the ways in which the era’s tensions and contradictions act as barometers for more enduring problems in American politics. His overarching thesis as a filmmaker—that passive faith in one’s nation leaves one blind to the fact that the interconnected forces of government and national media construct digestible narratives for their citizenry in ways that protect their own interests—doubles as a call to action, which therefore brands Stone as an activist working within the entertainment business, a perch from which he wields a rare influence.  

Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, a 2012 undertaking that comprised a Showtime documentary series as well as a 784-page volume, is the most comprehensive declaration of Stone’s political views to date. The episodic program retraces post-WWII history with an eye toward linking US military blunders over the past half century under the persistent ideology of American exceptionalism, and it leaves no lingering questions as to exactly where Stone stands on matters of domestic and international policy. Although Untold History’s shrewdly curated archival images are buoyed by Stone’s own voice, the filmmaker’s persona had already long been cemented by early successes in big-budget studio work. In films such as Born on the Fourth of July, JFK and Nixon, Stone ferociously interrogated foundational patriotic myths and “official” accounts of history. And with each film, the disapproval of the right, the invigoration of the left, and even the suspicion of historians, grew louder.

The cornerstone work of Stone’s polemical oeuvre is JFK, which reveals just how persuasive the director can be when in full command of his craft. Immersing the viewer in a sumptuous dramatization of the notorious failed case against the Warren Commission, the film functions as both a stinging exposé of the bureaucratic cowardice and corruption in Washington and a kino-fisted treatise on the art of argumentation, with its lengthy closing courtroom scene breaking down the famous Zapruder document frame by frame to arrive at the empirically substantiated conclusion that the eponymous president simply could not have been slain by one bullet. Stone’s powers of persuasion, predicated on an assertive, rapid-cut mixed-media approach that would come to define his treatment of period material, are so formidable in JFK that the film’s central conspiracy theory spawned a fiery discussion that continues today, arguably even paving the way for such anarchic works of conspiratorial consciousness-raising as Dylan Avery’s 9/11 documentary Loose Change (2009).

While such later incarnations of dissident media often take on a tone of hectoring self-righteousness (and boast only a fraction of JFK’s visual and editorial dynamism), Stone’s best work cracks open myriad possible interpretations to history rather than closing in on single readings. Indeed, his films, in arguing that pushing against accepted narratives provides a vital counterbalance to informational tyranny, even invite the viewer to conduct their own investigations if so compelled; Untold History, for instance, closes on a string of prompts directed squarely at the audience. Stone’s upcoming feature, Snowden, focuses on one such inquisitive citizen from recent years, continuing the director’s long tradition of seizing upon episodes from modern history, in films like Salvador, Wall Street and World Trade Center, to sift through underexplored implications, overlooked perspectives, and hidden transgressions. Precious few active American filmmakers can claim to take such an outspokenly political angle with anything like regularity, yet Stone has honed this particular métier for several decades at a level of high commercial visibility. He stays restless, and we should too. – Carson Lund