When we first meet Donald Trump in the new movie “The Apprentice” it is in the early 70s and Trump is in his mid-20s. He is a slumlord collecting rent from poor tenants for his abusive father. Some of them pour water on him. Some cuss him out. Some avoid him completely.
Facing bankruptcy for discriminatory rental policies, young Donald, looking for help, turns to the one man he believes can successfully bully the government – Roy Cohn. The infamous attorney takes Trump under his wing, teaches him how to dress, act, and above all how to “win." Thus begins an acidic mentorship that ends up giving us the Donald Trump we all know today.
“The Apprentice” is a dark comedy and drama that shows us what happens when our darkest desires, tempered by amorality, grim determination, a substandard intellect and greed all converge into a real-life Shakespearian tragedy. In Ali Abbasi’s movie, as in real life, Trump relies on the mentorship of a lean and mean Falstaff (Cohn as played by the brilliant Jeremy Strong) to guide him through his business dealings in New York.
Trump, as played by Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes in the Marvel movies) is a dead-ringer for the Trump we all know today. Stan plays Trump as a blank slate. In the beginning, he is naïve. Cohn quickly schools him up in his limousine about the reality and facts of the case against him and his father about the accusations of racial discrimination in their housing project. Through it all we see a Trump who is simultaneously ambitious and cowardly. Barnes nails Trump’s pursed lips and soft squint without ever descending into mimicry. He becomes Trump in such a frightening fashion that at times if you blink, you’ll swear it’s the real Trump on screen.
The movie played to raves at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, but after the real Trump and his lawyers threatened legal action with a cease and desist demand, the producers could not get a distribution deal. Briarcliff Entertainment and Tom Ortenberg stepped in and took up the cause. Ortenburg is well known for having the courage others have lacked in Hollywood and has distributed several controversial projects like “Spotlight,” which won two Academy Awards – including Best Picture.
“The Apprentice” may not be the movie Trump wants, but it’s the movie everyone should see. It embraces Trump’s controversies and takes us through a harrowing and yet, dare I say it, entertaining ride through the darker side of the American dream.
It is a place where there is no right or wrong, no morality and no truth with a capital “T." It is a construct, at least according to Strong’s Roy Cohn.
But the movie is even more than that. It is a character study of a young, impressionable and eager man of privilege, who wants to rebuild Manhattan in his own image and for his own vanity while trying to convince others it’s for the greater good. It is about two sons, the oldest of whom is abused by his father and told that as an airline pilot, he is nothing more than a “chauffeur in the sky” and a younger son who is scared of his dad yet yearns to please him.
It's the story of Cohn, who at the top of his game adopts and mentors the vacuous and malleable Donald Trump. Like Falstaff, he is convinced of his own importance. “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men,” Falstaff declared. Cohn? He preaches three rules of success: attack, deny everything and never admit defeat. It is the template by which Trump operates to this day.
The seeds of everything we know about Trump are in “The Apprentice.” The movie begins with a warning, the infamous” I am not a crook” statement by Richard Nixon, and ends with Trump screwing over his own mentor.
Who would ever think that a movie could make Roy Cohn a sympathetic character? Abbasi and the screenwriter Gabriel Sherman manage to do it in truly Faustian fashion. Trump strikes a deal with the devil and then uses the devil’s own advice to overpower him and become the King of Hades.
They manage to do this with subtle humor as well. Without giving anything away, the scene where Trump meets Andy Warhol is just laugh out loud funny. The scene where Trump discovers who the real Roy Cohn is? Devastatingly understated humor. Strong chews through his scenes as Cohn, with a perverse sense of humor, anger and focus. Knowing that he played Jerry Rubin in “The Chicago Seven” and seeing him even more effective as Cohn is not only a testament to his acting range, but it is truly Oscar-worthy. The same can be said for Stan who, while playing a cartoon villain/hero in several Marvel movies, simply reaches a depth in the real-life portrayal of Trump that is equally Oscar-worthy.
The supporting cast in this character study is as strong as the lead actors. Maria Bakalova who was last seen in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” shines as Ivana Trump, bringing a sense of poignancy and survivability to the character, especially after a traumatic scene of physical and sexual abuse. Martin Donovan as Trump’s father is frightening and pitiful. His older brother Freddy as played by Charlie Carrick is simply tragic.
The cinematography and soundtrack round out the immersive sense of the 70s. Authentic videotape from that time and the shallow, kitschy music take you back to the time of the “Me Generation” and every low-brow cliché of the 70s through the Reagan years.
Trump supporters will undoubtedly scream that this is “bad fiction.” And while the film takes some literary license, Trump’s entire life has been dedicated to the fabrication of a reality that suits him – even if it is entirely fiction. That’s exactly where this film hits the nail on the head.
It’s an important character story of a characterless man. It entertains and explains how Trump became who he is. All of the abuse, anger, shallowness, greed and insecurity is there from the very beginning; a volcano of human pettiness and greed stoked by the racist fire of his father, his own sense of entitlement and sparked by a man who helped defend Joe McCarthy.
In the end, more than anything else, “The Apprentice” is simply one of the most effective studies of the American Dream since Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”
“The Apprentice” opens nationwide on October 11.
