Filmmaker James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” opens in limited release this weekend, Friday, October 28. A soulful, melancholy drama about family, friendship, loss, privilege, and more, it’s also a movie, like many of Gray’s films about class and America, and how its 1980s-set Ronald Regan-era echoes back to where we are today.
Based on his own childhood in 1980s New York, “Armageddon Time” centers on the Graffs, a middle-class Jewish family living in Queens, with the story mainly being told through the eyes of 9-year-old Paul Graff (Banks Repeta). His father, Irving (Jeremy Strong from “Succession”), is a working-class plumber, his mother, Esther is played by Anne Hathaway, and his empathetic grandfather—the moral conscience of the film—Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins), is always encouraging Paul to never give up on his dreams in the face of anxious parents worried about the world and his unsteady future.
The film also features a brief but powerful cameo by Jessica Chastain, who plays Maryanne Trump in the film. In the movie, Paul Graff (Repeta) is eventually sent to an elite, all-white prep school that distances him from his best friend Johnny (Jaylin Webb), a Black kid from his old public school. In the film, mirroring Gray’s autobiographical experience as a child, the Trumps were donors to his school and therefore felt entitled to drop by and deliver speeches to kids about American exceptionalism, dreaming big and the privilege a school like this affords its students.
“In this institution, you can be anything you want to be. It won’t be because of handouts,” she sneers contemptuously. “It’ll be because you earned your way there.” The subtext, of course, is this is the fallacy of the American dream, and those that have “earned” their placement in this school have done so because their parents can afford it, something the middle-class Graffs can barely provide, and are seen struggling throughout to make this dream work.
The scene is very brief but pivotal and deeply resonant to Gray spoke to the Trump’s cluelessness about their privilege. “I actually think she is incredible in that moment,” Gray said of Chastain’s performance. “It’s a very hard thing to do because you can’t make it a caricature, and you can’t make fun of the person. But at the same time, the actual speech was so preposterous. [laughs]. I’ve said this before, but the whole Anne Richards joke about George W. Bush where she said, ‘he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple’— that was the type of speech that she gave.”
“And I remember as a 12-year-old watching this speech,” he recalled. “And thinking, even at that age, thinking it was like asinine beyond measure. Like, what are you talking about, lady?? You’re worth 500 million! What are you talking about? How hard she had to work to make it? And Jessica, I’d wanted to work with her for a while. I had run into her at a birthday party for a mutual friend. And she said, ‘Oh, I would love to work with you.’ And I had been trying to figure out something to do together. And there was one day of shooting, and I basically just sent a text to her and said, ‘Would you ever come consider doing this?’ And she said, ‘yes!’ I couldn’t believe it. And she does it perfectly because it’s not in the realm of making fun of the Trumps. It’s not distancing herself from it. But it’s also not trying to make her noble; it’s just doing it.”
“It also had to be a little bit theatrical because that’s the way the speech would be delivered,” he continued. “And it’s absurd, what she’s saying is absurd for so, you know, she had to believe what she was saying. She’s an incredible actor.”
I told Gray that I think Chastain fits into his milieu perfectly and I hope they work together again and said that’s the aim. “We plan on it,” he said. We’ll find something to do. All these people are geniuses. I love them, and I want to work with all of them again.”
Gray has already said he hopes to eventually make an “Armageddon Time” sequel, this time focusing on Anne Hathaway’s Esther Graff character but also the entire family in this film. “Armageddon Time” opens in limited release this weekend and then goes nationwide on Friday, November 4. We’ll have more from this conversation next week.
