Birth of a supervillain
Calling it: there will not be a more terrifying film to come out this year than Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice, a startlingly evoked, reasonably entertaining, essentially accurate biopic of the former and possibly incoming president Donald J. Trump.
The title is a reference to Trump's career in reality TV, as co-producer and host of the first fourteen seasons of the Mark Burnett show; also a reference to the lightly fictionalized role Trump (Sebastian Stan) plays here, as unofficial protege of the infamous Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), Senator Joseph McCarthy's former chief counsel and notorious homophobe-- we're going to see the apple fall not far from the tree, as the young trainee absorbs and regurgitates near-verbatim his mentor's three rules for winning: 1) Attack attack attack; 2) Admit nothing, deny everything 3) Claim victory, never admit defeat.
Arguably this is the most redundant biopic ever made: who doesn't know the sordid details of Trump's origins and rise to fame? What Abbasi brings to the table is a surprisingly effective evocation of the early 70s, with camerawork that wouldn't look out of place in a William Friedkin film (pause to note that when the Trumps first sit to dinner Abbasi lights and shoots the moment almost exactly like the final scene of The Godfather Part 2; later when Don visits an ailing Fred Sr. the house resembles the old Corleone residence in Long Beach (actually Staten Island)). There's nifty ensemble work from Stan (who looks unsettlingly healthy early on, then transforms into the mottle-cheeked corpulent creature we are familiar with today-- basically Jabba the Hutt in his adolescence growing into middle age) to Maria Bakalova (as an unexpectedly sympathetic Ivana Trump) to Martin Donovan (as a quietly menacing Fred Trump Sr.) to Charlie Carrick (as a quietly tragic Fred Trump Jr.). Extra points to Bruce Beaton for his amusingly louche Andy Warhol and Ian D Clark and Stuart Hughes for their quick cartoon sketches of Ed Koch and Mike Wallace.
As Roy Cohn, Jeremy Strong is up against stiff competition. I'd say the most vivid portrait of McCarthy's attack-dog lawyer was James Woods' in Citizen Cohn; didn't like Al Pacino's take in Angels in America-- thought he lacked energy and bile (to be honest I didn't like Mike Nichol's 2003 take on Tony Kushner's epic play; much prefer the 1995 New Voice stage production headed by Monique Wilson and directed by Bobby Garcia, with Paul Holme incinerating everyone else onstage as the noxious firebreathing Cohn). I'd say Strong falls somewhere in between, closer to Holme than Pacino, with his hangdog look that turns bull terrier when aroused, later a mask of exhaustion pinned loosely to the face when afflicted with HIV-- Strong gives us the larger-than-life kaiju presence the film needs, stomping and flattening the surrounding political landscape. Stan doesn't quite eclipse Strong in turn-- Stan is a smart actor, but his Trump lacks or isn't motivated or wasn't intended to loom over Cohn, just slip the metaphorical shiv into the older man's liver from behind, after checking with a doctor that it's safe to approach (that tribute dinner Trump throws Cohn late in the story is perhaps the film's ghoulish high point). My ideal version would have son swallowing father figure swallowing father but this works too-- Trump is never allowed much grandeur, just a lot of grandiosity. Stolen valor. Borrowed glory.
Maybe what's lacking in this otherwise intelligent coherent account is the stench of madness, the lust to pull down or splay wide open on a wooden table twitching and bleeding a contemptible celebrity wannabe, someone whose appetite for attention is matched only by the blind unthinking hordes willing to give him said attention. I've seen this kind of demented intensity onscreen only a few times before, maybe Scorsese with The Wolf of Wall Street or Coralie Fargeat with The Substance (I know I know I just poked holes in Fargeat's film, but can you imagine Gabriel Sherman's script subjected to Fargeat's perversely imaginative direction?).
But that's me wishing for the moon. It's an otherwise well-made message pic-- and, I submit, horror pic, mainly due to Cohn's third principle for winning: never admit defeat. We saw that play out in 2020 and how close the election was and we're seeing it playing out in 2024 and how close the elections are turning out to be (and even after Nov. 5 if he doesn't win we're still not sure he'll just fade into the woodwork). Going off on the (likely apocryphal) Twain aphorism "never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience," Trump doesn't have to be smart he just has to be stubborn, deluded, inflexible-- in the hope that maybe somewhere sometime somehow he'll win anyway. And maybe, as the film demonstrates again and again between Fred Trump and son, between Cohn and his protege, that's what's needed to win, legally, illegally, whatever.
Meanwhile, and even if the film has not quite reached the audience size it deserves to date, kudos to Abbasi for the attempt. May its numbers (of viewers, of likeminded pictures) increase.
No comments:
Post a Comment