As a person who definitely stands on one side of the political debate, I really watched this film in order to try and better understand the people in my life that I am at odds with and possibly be able to better reason with them. I have family members and co-workers that I no longer speak with at all, least of all about politics, because of this divide.The conclusion I take away from Split is that our differences are nothing new. What is new and accounts for the damaging and unprecedented divide we see today in our country is that the major media conglomerates are dictating the debate and inflaming good people on both sides. Corporations have created this wedge, keeping us occupied with moral issues, while they engage in the greatest immorality of all...The problem isn't the other side's ideology versus mine, it is that we Americans have allowed our corrupt system of government to consolidate the real power, our power to make choices, by selling out to the multinational corporations.And it doesn't stop with the media.
Watch "The Future of Food", "Independent America" and "RiP" here on Hulu, and maybe "Generation Rx" on Veoh (I'm sure there are dozens of others) to see examples of how our government colludes with big business while doing away with citizen's rights, and watch "The Corporation" to understand exactly the type of "citizen" a corporation is. Realize that for every major debate in the news, wanton profits are being made for stakeholders who are either interested in maintaining the status quo or gaining more power.And now the Supreme Court has granted corporations the freedom to influence our elections...
Corporations will select the candidate, finance the campaign and count the votesWe will keep arguing about separation of church and state, gay rights, abortion, immigration, terrorism and evolution; we will say socialism here and new world order there and one day wake up to a global corporate oligarchy - And no choices.

I like the topic, and I like many of the pundits used. Unfortunately, however, the movie meandered and was far too long to not say anything more substantive than it does. Rather than using editing tricks to cut in stock footage and narratives from high school history class, they should have pointed their editing talent at making the movie more concise and to the point. I could see showing this to high school students or for colleges abroad taking American studies, but here in the States, this was too elementary and poorly thrown together for me to recommend to serious adults.

I only barely gave this three stars. This kid does bring up some good points, but completely ignores the glaring ones. He's baffled that two people can feel the same alienation & anger @Reps or Dems FOR THE EXACT SAME REASONS. OK, explore that, junior. It's because they're the same morally repugnant POSs on both sides of the aisles. I'm glad he enjoyed his little coming of age road trip. I;m also glad he didn't get his teeth knocked in. Talking politics w/many strangers is a good way to cause that... Ignoring the root problems won't make them go away. This kid probably meant well, but needs more life-experience for such a topic.

While the premise is good -- ask six basic questions as a method for unpacking the red/blue divide among american voters -- the documentary didn't shed any new light on the matter and, in the end showed the well known "purple america" map but didn't say anything about it other than "americans are more alike than ever before." The individual snippets of interviews with a variety of people (average americans, politicians, academics, pundits) were interesting, but the document failed to deliver any sort of analysis. At times, the voice of the documentary makers was down right juvenile (perhaps that is why we didn't get analysis??). I cringed one too many times when the documentary makers added their voice.On the plus side, this is a very balanced documentary featuring people from all over the map, geographically and politically. Unfortunately, I didn't learn anything new.