The new biopic explores the influence of Roy Cohn over the Father of MAGA.
It has been a year of films with, to put it mildly, dramatic behind-the-scenes points of origin. We have potentially the final film of the master of 1970s cinema, a sequel to a billion dollar hit that appears to be dead on arrival, and the ongoing hand wringing about what the future of blockbuster cinema looks like with vanishing certainty. But perhaps no film has quite so dramatic and controversial a background as The Apprentice, the English-language feature debut from Ali Abbasi.
A biographical film focusing on the rise of Donald Trump through the 1970s into the 1980s, the film was financed inch by inch due to its potentially controversial subject matter, including at least one producer (Dan Snyder, the infamous former owner of the Washington Commanders) who claims to have been misled about the tone and perspective of the film. In addition to this, the film wished to advertise during the widely watched Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, only for their ad-buys to be rejected by all major networks.
Of course it’s not hard to see why people would be skittish about the film. For all of his criticism, Donald Trump is a popular figure with a large swath of the country, cutting out a potential base of would-be viewers. In addition, while the film deals with historical events, like most biopics it can play fast and loose with the actual specifics of the facts. Which typically everyone understands, but in an election year that the center of the film is running to be President again, it requires an understanding that dramatic license is being employed. This is perhaps why the film front-ends its disclaimer that while inspired by true events, some fictionalization has occurred.
The interesting thing about The Apprentice is that its depiction of Trump, while inarguably negative, is much more nuanced than some of the most apoplectic criticism of him you’ve seen. As played by Sebastian Stan, Trump is not depicted as a creature born from and to pure evil, but rather a man who yearns for importance and significance, attracted to power but constantly found impotent. That is until he meets Roy Cohn, infamous attorney who was best known as a partner with Joseph McCarthy in his tireless prosecution of presumed dangerous Communists.
The film’s central thesis is that Cohn, played to devious perfection by Jeremy Strong, is the actual architect of the Trump we know today. It was Cohn, Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman argue, that instilling in Trump a ruthless philosophy that in time transformed an ambitious but hapless dreamer into the cutthroat symbol of Reagan’s America. He teaches Trump to never apologize, to always deny any wrongdoing, and to shape the very narrative of reality around what makes himself look best. In one of the films more powerful and illuminating scenes, Cohn informs Trump that America is not a country of laws, but of men. And if you can manipulate the men to meet your desired result, you can shift the culture around you. Cohn clearly has a gravitation pull to him that people respect, and it’s a power that Trump longs for.
The film is effectively split into two halves: the tutelage of Trump by Cohn, and then the transformation of Donald Trump into “the Donald,” the figure we know today. One of the smart moves Stan makes as an actor is that the earliest scenes will feel off from the Trump we all observe today, barely recognizeable, only for more and more of his trademark mannerisms to emerge as the film barrels towards its conclusion. The introduction of familiar movements and verbal tics are gradual, but by the final scene are in place, without feeling like Stan is doing a broad impression but rather living into the man himself. He finds a path that internalizes the why of the out-sized Trump, pinpointing precisely where the performance pieces are.
Stan’s performance is only one piece of this slow reveal however. The film starts paying homage to 1970s cinema, a gritty and scratched look at New York at it’s lowest moment. In Trump’s own self-mythologizing, his ascendence one-for-one falls alongside the revitalization of New York, and as the film goes on the grit gives way to a sort of sheen. It is gradual, if not precisely subtle, but the evolution of the man is presented as a clarity on the actual texture of the film. As it shifts and sways, the man who know comes into sharp focus.
While the Cohn-Trump relationship establishes the central backbone of the film, there are several other plots woven throughout. Chief among the side-stories is Trump’s relationship with Ivana, his first wife and a central part of his 1980s persona. The most dramatic and disturbing portions of this portion have been discussed, but like everything else in the film, this story is a gradual unraveling. It depicts a young man infatuated with a beautiful woman, but over time what was once exciting becomes boring and passe. Trump’s constant desire for upward mobility means that anything that ties him to the past becomes dead weight, including human companionship.
Another sub-plot that is somewhat more humanizing is Trump’s complicated relationship with his brother, Fred Jr., who drank himself to death. This is perhaps the most sympathetic aspect of the film, as it shows the deterioration of their relationship, but how Freddy remains a constant soft spot for Donald. But even this is a casualty to Trump’s own ambition.
Abbasi’s film is unquestionably not a sympathetic portrayal of the man who would be the 45th President of the United States. But it does paint a more complicated portrait than simply someone who is inherently evil, but rather someone who took in the lessons of a true believer in some form of libertarian American exceptionalism, and then took those guideposts as a means of elevation himself specifically. Cohn constantly tells his clients that his first and most important client is “America,” whatever that may mean or be internalized. But Donald is always his own most important goal, and everyone around him will learn this eventually, one way or another.
This split, ruthlessness in the name of a cause, whether you agree with it or not, versus the self seems to be at the heart of Abbasi’s read on where Trump went astray. He saw Cohn and his methodologies as a means to elevating himself, and no one else.
