Harry Moore
Words by Harry Moore
The Apprentice
An ambitious slum lord from Queens seeks to escape his father’s shadow and ascends to the affluent world of Manhattan real estate under the guidance of his contentious attorney. Of course, that slum lord is none other than Donald Trump and his attorney is the infamous Roy Cohn, who instills three rules for success in his impressionable apprentice: always attack, never admit wrongdoing and always claim victory, even in defeat. As you may already know, these rules come to define Trump in his outlook on the world and his pursuit of power for the sake of power. “The Apprentice” portrays how two domineering men, his father, Fred Trump, and Cohn, managed to pour aspects of themselves onto the blank canvas that was a young Donald Trump, who would go on to be the man who would be king president.
As this film is just focused on Donald Trump’s character and not his influence on politics, I will do my best to separate the man from the politician and not go into too much detail about how his policies, such as his vaguely communicated plans for mass deportations will upend communities and cost tens of billions per year to implement, and his dismantling of Roe has caused a significant number of miscarriages and unnecessary maternal deaths to occur. No, like the film this film will only critique Donald Trump the man. The man who is allegedly an admirer of Hitler – and given that I’m sure he is no scholar of history, he most likely wasn’t referring to some niche, undiscussed economic policy Hitler implemented. I think it was more the unchecked power and destruction of his enemies that Trump envies.
“The Apprentice” is a well-researched telling of Donald Trump’s rise in the business world and his litany of well-documented foibles. Anyone who has read much about Trump’s backstory or how he contorts himself behind closed doors will spend a lot of time pointing at the screen through all the quirks and indiscretions that have been revealed through journalists and eyewitnesses. “The Apprentice” may be an unflinching character study of Donald Trump, but I don’t believe that director Ali Abbasi and his team set out to make the film purely as a takedown of its subject; in fact, the film does more to humanize Trump than any other amount of coverage about the man has mustered. We see how intentionally cruel and dismissive his bigoted father was to Trump and his brother, Fred Jr., and how his desire for a supportive father figure drove him straight into the arms of Cohn who instilled him with the tools to become a “winner.” Some of the runtime is devoted to showing the state of New York in the ’70a and that buying Manhattan real estate was considered something of a gamble at the time. It also shows Trump was able to take that gamble through a tax abatement Cohn secured by blackmailing a city official, all to the protests of working people who built and lived in the community.
When it comes to creating an on-screen Donald Trump, the film clearly takes inspiration from one of my neighbors’ weird flags by casting a big-screen superhero in the role of Trump with Sebastian “The Winter Soldier” Stan donning the bronzer. Outside of his MCU duties, Stan has built an impressive resume of diverse performances, and his work here may be his strongest yet, showing a strong attention to detail in portraying the shifting ticks and demeanor of someone over the course of decades, as we see Trump transform budding — if naive — businessman into the belligerent asshole we all know and some of us bafflingly love. Maria Bakalova also gives a strong performance as Ivanna Trump and carries the emotional weight of the film, as her husband’s insatiable void inevitably leaves her hurt and broken in his wake. But Jeremy Strong is a revelation as Roy Cohn. After his award-winning run on “Succession” ended, Strong has immersed himself into a completely different character and brought him to life in a skin-crawling turn that should be met with further acclaim for the actor, who was once Daniel Day Lewis’ apprentice and is certainly doing his best to live up to his mentor’s teaching.
Overall, “The Apprentice” takes a pretty neutral view on Trump. Abassi doesn’t frame his character in any specific light and presents his film as a matter of fact. It just so happens that he has done a multitude of horrible things, both in the public eye in private, with little to nothing that could remotely be considered redeemable. Particularly by the standards of a movie character. Trump’s stiffing of his employees, abandonment of his brother and assault of his wife have all been well-reported on and the film portrays them without casting much judgment, simply stating that yes, this man did these things that don’t suggest a strong or admirable character.
I had an unplanned double feature of seeing this film and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and after watching these two biopics about our greatest president and, let’s say, decidedly not our greatest president, I was quietly comforted to know that there have always been terrible men who will use our government to hold back progress, and still the people have always eventually overcome.
Saturday Night
Jason Reitman’s tightly wound backstage comedy is set in the moments leading up to the airing of the first episode of Saturday Night Live following a young Lorne Michaels (Gabriel Labelle) trying to will together a show amidst a chaotic writing staff, belligerent crew, egotistical cast members and faithless network executives looking for a reason to pull the plug before the cameras could start rolling in Studio 8H.
“Saturday Night” does a good job of highlighting how transgressive and era-shifting SNL was upon its release in 1975 with its introduction of a new generation of comedic voices who would become trailblazers in their medium that ushered in a more irreverent tone for mainstream comedy in America — a far cry from the sanitized, corporate stylings of the show’s current era. The cast members do an admirable job of bringing these characters to life. Despite playing some of the most recognizable personalities of the last 50 years of comedy, none of the actors fall into doing an outright impression of their counterparts that feel out of place in the film but rather look to embody some of their essence in service of what Reitman in striving to achieve with “Saturday Night” and the cast are all uniformly very strong.
After playing a young Steven Spielberg in “The Fabelmans,” Labelle ably leads the ensemble as the young Lorne Michaels without needing to do an impersonation of one of the most impersonated pop culture figures. Elsewhere, Cory Michael Smith embodies the cocky wit of a young Chevy Chase, while Dylan O’Brien unveils a shockingly good Dan Ackroyd. Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morriss continues his hot streak of doing strong work in everything he’s in, and then there are plenty of memorable performances by actors with only a few scenes of screentime.
Reitman’s film operates with a frantic energy that captures the pressure and nerves that go into putting on a live television show, but a lot of the tension that “Saturday Night” is seeking simply isn’t there because as everyone who is watching the film already knows that of course the show will go on, for another 50 years now, which undermines a lot of the film’s central conceit. It is structured as though there is a ticking clock and failure lurks around every corner, but there is no drama when Willem Dafoe’s network head threatens to air a rerun of Johnny Carson in place of the debut at the film’s climax because the success of “Saturday Night Live” goes without saying. The behind the scenes stories from “Saturday Night Live” could make fertile ground for a compelling drama; stars were born, friendships were formed and broken, a few untimely deaths, there was even a murder! But Reitman’s approach here never fully connects.
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