the apprentice (2024) surprised me
donald trump biopic so soon?
I can’t lie. When I first heard about this film, I rolled my eyes.
Sebastian Stan manning the role of the ruthless former president Donald Trump intertwined with my issues with the biopic genre, I was confused at the decision for this type of film about this type of person to be created so soon. A HBO limited series documenting Donald Trump’s rise and (hopefully) fall in 5-10 years time makes a lot more sense to me, and with the US general election coming up so soon I was slightly confused about the timing of The Apprentice’s release. But, alas, the film comes out.
This being my first Ali Abbasi film, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this but wow. His directing style really, really impressed me. He harnesses a fantastic ability to use the same elements of directing throughout the film but have them be placed into different contexts throughout the narrative to derive a deeper meaning. A great example of this is with Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of Roy Cohn, a ruthless, domineering lawyer Donald Trump comes into contact with in the early days. Throughout the film, Strong elongates his neck and pushes his head forward which, in the film’s beginning, makes him seem invasive and a man of power, which, with the same stance, slowly transforms into a symbol of loss and apphrension.
Abbasi is particularly good at small details being symbolic of the bigger picture; Donald Trump beginning to be the man to pick up the phone, suggesting a new sense of agency as he is transgressing the limitations of his influence, his weight loss consultation resulting in the coke on his desk switching to diet coke, which encourages the idea that Donald Trump cares about the image of himself without taking proper care of the other important aspects of his life, and furthermore, him gifting fake diamond cufflinks (with his own name on them?) to his dying friend, who also had a friend die recently, which pushes the idea (which is still prominent today) that he pretends to care for others, whilst every seemingly nice gesture only really benefits himself. What most stood out to me was a few moments after the latter, there is an image of a birthday cake of an American flag with burning sparklers on it. Roy Cohn breaks this constant image of only possessing the will for more and more power and bursts into tears. You could possibly interpret this as the transference of influence and evil from Cohn to Trump results in the USA having to pay the price.
This film fluctuates between a more stripped-down, gritty texture in the camera-work to something more modern, which evidently captures the camera quality of the time this film is set. The camera movement is shaky, which, at first, I interpreted as a physical manifestation of Donald Trump’s uncertainty when entering the business world with perceived dumb ideas for business ventures, but then as the film carried on, saw it more as it feeding into Donald Trump being a public figure as if the camera is filming for a TV show or documentary, which I found incredibly effective. As Donald Trump had more success and began to win on things that people didn’t believe he would win on, his ego grew and his character changed, which both the texture of the shots and the frequent movement aided. Overall, Ali Abbasi I am your biggest fan and need to deep dive your filmography immediately.
And of course, we have to give our flowers to the cast. Sebastian Stan did a great job, perfectly encapsulating these weird and unique mannerisms that Trump actually has. I spent a lot of the film staring at the movement of his mouth. It was uncanny how accurate he got it. Honestly, Stan may rival Trump for who has the best pout. Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump was amazing as well, totally embodying the glamour of her character. However, the person who deserves all of the flowers ever in the world is Jeremy Strong in the role of Roy Cohn. Including what I talked about earlier, his exploration of this character and his downfall is excellent. I would be so surprised if he didn’t get an Oscar nomination for this role.
I think this film provides quite an interesting take on the biopic genre. It started with a ‘some of this is fictionalised even though this is based on real people’ warning at the beginning, which of course I really, really appreciated and think all biopics should adopt. It also provides a much more multi-faceted film to the audience than just being about the relationship between Cohn and Trump, tackling themes of the evil of the corporate world, the disposability of women, corruption, immorality and interestingly, the aids crisis. Whilst there are moments of comedy, like Donald Trump eating shit after talking to a woman he fancied and Ivana yelling '“your face is orange!” amidst an argument, which made my screening erupt into laughter, none of that took away from the brutality of certain scenes and the overall messaging.
Watching this, I took a lot more away from it then I originally thought I would and I will be googling all of the context and differences between the actuality of the story and this adaptation. With my limited knowledge on American Politics, my school’s politics course mainly covering from Obama’s terms and after, I found that this was fairly accessible, certain parts linking to things that happened in his campaigning and presidential term. There was a shot of him when Cohn said ‘to never accept defeat’, which, of course, he infamously did not accept defeat in 2020 and broke the traditional transition of power from president to president with the January 6th riots. Whilst I question the timing of this film coming out, it does make me laugh how pissed off Donald Trump is about this film, naming the cast and others involved ‘human scum’. This film is nowhere near an endorsement, addressing issues of his racism and rape, and whilst Trump claims that this film was done to vilify him and ‘hurt a political movement’, I certainly don’t see it that way. This film addresses the issues with corporate and wealthy America, and if the shoe fits, walk in it. Screenwriter Gabriel Sherman told Entertainment Weekly “The funny thing is, everything in the movie that seems the most shocking is actually completely based on real events. Very little has been dramatised. It’s one of these stories where the truth is stranger than fiction”.
I believe criticising politicians is so ridiculously important. I do hope this has a domino effect of having more detailed and well-crafted biopics (with creative liberty warnings) criticising public figures and politicians and I commend Abbasi and the cast for their amazing work.
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