Five years ago, Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi broke out internationally with the Oscar-nominated “Border,” a thorny little beast of a fable about love, complicity, and guilt. His latest prods at some of the same themes, although the thorny little beast at the center of “The Apprentice” is far from a fictional creature of fables.
Abbasi’s newest chronicles the rise of former American president Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) through his relationship with lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Before diving into the fatidical first meeting between the two men, the director makes an important disclaimer about the film that is to come: the people you will see on-screen are real; their stories might have been fictionalized. Then, he cuts into a very factual piece of footage: Nixon’s infamous 1973 speech at the height of Watergate. The grainy tape shows the soon-to-be-fallen president sternly claiming: “I’m not a crook!”
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This on-the-nose initial parallel brilliantly sets the tone for the two hours ahead, a ride that does away with subtlety without leaning into overexposition. Said ride begins in a swanky members-only club in New York, where the overconfident Cohn gravitates towards a meek, unsure Trump. He brings him under his wing, first offering to help get him out of a discrimination lawsuit filed against his family’s property development business and later stepping into a much more fatherly position. His advice ranged from Bribery 101 to the clauses that should be added to his pre-nuptial agreement.
The crucial decade separating that initial meeting and the tragic demise of the relationship between the two men encompasses many of the main tidbits we associate with the Trump of today, from his unstoppable quest to build a phallic-shaped empire at the heart of the Big Apple with his Trump Tower to his troubled marriage with Czech-American model turned socialite Ivana Trump (Maria Bakalova). The cinematography follows this transition, going from the lush, grainy texture of ’70s film to the washed-out hues of ’80s camcorders.
When the project was first announced, many were skeptical of the idea of a biopic about one of the most contentious public figures of modern times starring a hunky Marvel alum and eyeing a big premiere at a glitzy film festival. While all these concerns remain true, especially given this is an election year in the US, Abbasi manages to thread the lines between tabloid fodder and veiled endorsement with great skill. There’s a running comic vein throughout the film that flirts with mockery while bypassing the pastiche, like when the camera catches a glimpse of an empty-brained Donald as he sits alone at the big boys’ table, with no big boys to play with or when the broad man bumps into the slim, cool Andy Warhol at a party he has no business being in, his inaptitude making him feel smaller and smaller while his ego begins showing the first signs of inflation.
With “The Apprentice,” Stan continues his run of lining up weird, big-swing projects of the likes of “Fresh” and “A Different Man” to shake off the ghost of Bucky Barnes. The bet pays off. Stan plays Trump without an overreliance on the frazzled blonde wig and increasingly pronounced prosthetics. The actor is at his greatest whenever he taps into this marriage between a swollen superiority complex and paralyzing insecurity that make up the fabric of the reality TV star turned unlikely President of the United States.
Stan finds in Strong a great match. Abbasi’s latest sees the “Succession” actor play a Roy once more, although this time he is not as much the plagued victim of daddy issues as his benefiting perpetrator. The big, boisterous Roy of the early ’70s is much, much fun to watch, and when the larger-than-life scammer disguised as a prosecutor begins suffering the consequences of AIDS, Strong plays him with a pained reticence that is at once greatly moving and deeply effective in its understanding of how the illness affects the dynamics between the duo. Cohn was a closeted gay man for all professional intents but led a very open life with his younger partner, who also died from the complications of AIDS.
Trump’s reaction to Cohn’s lifestyle is one of the most interesting (and formative) aspects of the evolution of the central relationship. While at first young Donald emulates Cohn in all major aspects of his life — from copying the prosecutor’s number plate to leaning more and more into the orange-hued pleasures of fake tan — Cohn’s frailing health nags at the mogul, not necessarily because it is a physical reminder of his mentor’s sexuality, but because it makes him look weak.
Weakness, of course, has no space in the life of Donald Trump. No longer the whining mentee of his much savvier friend and pumped to the nines with diet pills filled with amphetamines, Trump morphs into a delusional broken radio, one stuck on the audiobook for his best-selling business bible “The Art of the Deal.” There is, of course, a fear that a film like “The Apprentice” might pose a dangerous chance to endear this buffoon to audiences. Alas, the Trump at the center of Abbasi’s sleek satire is the same Trump already etched in the cultural consciousness — an incompetent, disloyal, criminal fool. That, one hopes, will only cater only to those already indoctrinated. [B+]
