Point of View: Movies That Shine a Light on the Current Moment
Emergency, the long-delayed biopic featuring Kangana Ranaut as Indira Gandhi, was a flop, and we’re yet to see a successful movie based on the life of Narendra Modi (a 2019 film starring Vivek Oberoi was dismissed as hagiography). There is, however, an insightful 2024 film—Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice—that captures the rise of a young Donald J. Trump in New York City.
The news in the U.S. these days is bleak, with some calling the situation an emergency. Chaos, authoritarianism, and uncertainty appear to be pulling us into a dark pit from which we may not emerge anytime soon. But the films mentioned here, including The Apprentice, are entertaining without being preachy or losing relevance. At times, they can be unexpectedly enlightening.
These movies were made before the 2024 election. So, how are filmmakers responding to Trump 2.0, whose conservatism and reactionary zeal is being felt everywhere, including cultural spaces? Will they capitulate, as the tech barons and a few media companies did? Hopefully not. Movie professionals usually have a liberal, progressive outlook, and they may resist any coercion.
Nevertheless, Trump’s animus is real. Given the threat of lawsuits, funding cuts, tariffs, and political retribution, we’re bound to see some caution in Hollywood. And the burden of making bold, thoughtprovoking films that take a critical look at the MAGA agenda may fall on the shoulders of smaller players. Big studios and corporations, sensing opportunity and fearing retaliation, seem eager to cozy up to Trump. Like several leaders of other nations, they know that the right formula for dealing with the dealmaker is to be transactional and not step on his toes.
Foreign and independent film production companies have already filled the void left by the big studios. In fact, two of the three most-nominated movies for the 97th Academy Awards wouldn’t have been made without them. Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, a musical crime thriller that’s also a trans story, led the pack with 13 nominations and won two Oscars. Even more than the theme, what made the movie’s frontrunner status noteworthy is that it’s in Spanish.
The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s much-praised epic, received 10 nominations and won three Oscars. At three and a half hours, including a 15-minute intermission, it seems too long for today’s theater audiences. And yet, it’s such an aural and visual treat, enhanced by the VistaVision format developed in the 1950s, that most movie lovers, even in the age of streaming, would have no problem sitting through it. The acting is persuasive, and the period detail only adds to the nostalgic experience.
I found its timeliness striking. It’s true that the film, involving a distinguished if fictional Jewish architect, takes place in mid-20th-century America. Still, his displacement and harrowing immigrant journey has an unmistakable contemporary resonance. As the films opens, László Toth (Adrien Brody, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his role), a European refugee fleeing the madness of World War Two, is in the belly of a ship plowing through the ocean. When it enters New York Harbor, he catches a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, bringing cheers and smiles. But it feels ominous because the tumult inside gives him an upside-down view, as if the imaginary “Welcome to America” sign that the statue represents has been inverted.
Oddly enough, it reminded me of an image that a friend shared on social media. It shows Lady Liberty holding two suitcases as she flees Ellis Island, and the caption reads: “Leaving before she gets deported.” Director Corbet, who co-wrote The Brutalist, has said, “The film is about immigration, full stop.” It’s not easy to sum up this lengthy movie in a paragraph. One has to watch it. As Toth says, “Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?”
Toth’s dispossession, alienation, and humiliation also lead to an inversion, a knowing inversion of a popular saying. At the first Venice Biennale of Architecture, where Toth’s work is celebrated, his niece speaks on his behalf. He is there as well, but because of a drug addiction that began on the ship, he is incapacitated, even mute, and confined to a wheelchair. Quoting her uncle on what’s important, she ends her speech by saying, “It’s not the journey, it’s the destination.”
The Apprentice, too, is about the destination. Backed by terrific performances—Sebastian Stan, as the young Trump, and Jeremy Strong, as the attorney Roy Cohn, won Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively—it’s a fast-moving biopic that takes one back to the turbulent New York of the 1970s and ’80s. A disclosure acknowledges the use of creative license. The film’s jazzy, energetic style reflects the unruly rhythms of the city and the brash restlessness of an ambitious and grasping real estate tycoon.
Trump’s transformation under the malign influence of Cohn is astonishing to behold. Tellingly, it’s a discrimination lawsuit filed up Black tenants that jump-starts their relationship, turning Trump into the take-no-prisoners operator that we’re familiar with now. After initial qualms, he embraces Cohn’s three rules: (1) Attack, attack, attack. (2) Admit nothing and deny everything. (3) No matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat.
There’s more, if we want to understand Trump and his impact, but these concise principles do tell us a lot about the man who “loves” to do deals. “You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win,” Cohn says, a chilling mantra whose echoes are all-too-obvious these days. Listening to Trump and Elon Musk, as they issue their head-spinning bulletins and diktats, I’m reminded of this quote from Cohn: “You create your own reality. Truth is a malleable thing.”
The well-written script is strewn with other highly quotable nuggets:
“I say if you’re indicted, you’re invited.”
“Play the man, not the ball.”
“This is a nation of men, not laws.”
“If somebody comes after you with a knife, you shoot ’em back with a bazooka.”
The last one—said by Trump to Tony Schwartz, the journalist he hired to ghostwrite The Art of the Deal—reminded me why Democrats can often seem helpless when they face Republicans in the do-or-die arena of American politics. You can’t bring a knife to a gun battle, it’s been said.
It’s not just recent movies that capture this extraordinary period. Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, which wasn’t a hit when it came out in the 1950s, seems prescient now. A handsome, charismatic hayseed (played by Andy Griffith), riding on a wave of publicity unleashed by television and media hype, becomes a powerful celebrity. He is a proto-Trump. The film may appear tame by today’s standards, but the contemporary relevance is still remarkable.
For other older movies in the same vein, one could name the following: Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1940s); Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1960s); Hal Ashby’s Being There (1970s); David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone (1980s); and Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog (1990s).
Returning to The Apprentice, in a scene set in Aspen, Colorado, Ivana (Trump’s first wife) has finally agreed to date him. During their conversation, he tells her about a lesson that his father rather than Roy Cohn taught him. There are two types of people in life: Killers and losers.
“It’s not good to be a killer, no?” Ivana says, shocked.
Trump disagrees. His response is short and blunt. “Killer means winner.”
Murali Kamma is the managing editor of Khabar. A slightly different version of this column appeared in The Quint, a news and opinion media outlet based in New Delhi, India. Email: letters@khabar.com
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