POLITICS: The documentary on the model first lady goes deeper than you’d think

“Melania” is a study in what Ernest Hemingway called “grace under pressure.”

Hemingway knew a thing or two about the subject — he had to write gracefully under the intense pressure he, and his publisher and critics, placed on himself, and the tales he told were about men striving for grace under the pressures of physical danger and psychological torment.

“Melania” is a woman’s tale, of a kind that often goes untold.

Melania Trump is under pressure for what she is, both naturally and thanks to events: She’s a beautiful woman, a force unto herself in the fashion world, and the wife of the most powerful man on the planet.

Politics is a world of pressure with very little grace — can Melania maintain hers amid the whirlwind?

Brett Ratner’s documentary is a peek into her life in the weeks leading up to Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

Naturally, it’s been met by sneers from left-leaning critics, who are the more bitter because the film’s a box-office success: “Melania” had the best opening weekend of any documentary in a decade.

But the haters would do themselves a favor if they took this film more seriously. It’s going to be watched for years to come for reasons that have nothing to do with today’s politics.

It’s not so much a documentary as a document — it directly testifies to some basic truths.

In fact, they’re so basic, they’re embarrassing: Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of a little boy who shocks absolutely everyone by telling the truth about the emperor’s new clothes — pointing out he’s actually naked.

From the first scene after its opening montage, “Melania” teaches that clothes have the power to fascinate, but tapping into that power is hard work.

Models and fashion photographers certainly know that, and politicians — though they try their best to pretend they’re above it — are acutely aware of just how much they depend on their appearance.

Women, of course, are never allowed to forget it — which some resent and others embrace as an advantage in the war of the sexes; not only the war between the sexes but among the members of their own sex, too.

Melania Trump is a woman who stands for the women who don’t resent themselves or a beautiful competitor.

In other words, women who probably don’t vote for Democrats.

At a time the political left is pathologically anxious about “gender,” Melania showcases the other side’s confidence.

Beauty is a good thing, and while it’s rooted in nature — and nature has been kinder to Melania than to most — it takes effort to perfect.

Ratner’s film draws attention to that, giving plenty of credit to the tailors, seamstresses and other fashion professionals (many of them immigrants, like Melania herself) who contribute their arts to amplifying nature’s gifts.

The critics detest “Melania” for more than merely partisan reasons: They think fashion is a sin, a distraction from morally serious subjects — and beauty, like wealth, is unequally distributed and thus a crime against democracy’s bedrock principle.

And because women are expected to be more concerned with it than men are, it’s a token of women’s oppression, too.

These beliefs don’t allow progressives to escape from human nature — they get judged, and judge one another, on appearances, too.

They only lead to doublethink and hypocrisy, and those things are bad for mental health.

“Melania” is the kind of medicine a moralistic leftist needs.

The film isn’t just about image and fashion or the professionalism and nerve required of Melania to keep up appearances.

But Ratner has chosen not to make a conventional film about the do-gooderism expected of a politician’s wife.

Melania’s voiceover recounts her charitable and humanitarian initiatives, and we see her discussing them with Brigitte Macron and Jordan’s Queen Rania.

Melania also comforts an Israeli woman who’d been taken hostage by Hamas and whose husband was still a prisoner of the terrorists. (He’s since been freed, along with other captives, as a result of the Trump administration’s efforts, as a note at the movie’s end indicates.)

These good works are the substance of a first lady’s public role, and Melania conveys her commitment to them in her own voice.

Yet unlike the typical political documentary that tries to present its protagonist as all depth and no surface, and thereby comes off as entirely fake, “Melania” recognizes that real depths can only be reached through surfaces.

Melania was a model before she married Donald Trump, and she remains a model as first lady.

All first ladies have to be concerned about appearances, and not only first ladies. Life itself is a performance, for everyone.

This was something George Washington understood very well.

He was a tall man who looked like a leader, and he was determined to look ever more like one — until he became one.

His military experience was obviously of first importance. But few generals can accomplish what Washington achieved no matter how many victories they win on the battlefield.

He had to train himself to become an image of greatness, in everything from his manners to the clothes (and false teeth) he wore.

“Melania” is an education in a part of politics, and life, that a cult of phony naturalism has tried to make everyone forget.

It’s also a reminder of the power of feminine beauty in politics.

The great 18th-century statesman-philosopher Edmund Burke, considered today the founder of conservative thought, knew what he was doing when he wrote his first book on the subject of the sublime and the beautiful.

His most important work, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” contains a passage that amazes readers even now, in which he celebrates Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, in all her splendor and makes her the very symbol of the love that binds the nation together.

“Melania” doesn’t make Melania out to be Marie Antoinette. It nonetheless instructs us about aesthetic order — a delicate yet real authority built not on force but grace.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.