In the Dark Reviews

I entered "The Apprentice" wary from the failures of Oliver Stone's "W." in 2008 and Adam McKay's "Vice" in 2018, worried that yet another attempted biopic of a right-wing leader would fall short in spite of its acting and directorial talent.

What I instead saw was a nonspectacular but nonetheless solidly competent film, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, that succeeded by focusing less on the mannerisms of its real-life subjects than on examining the consequences of their espoused philosophies.

I don't dismiss the skills that Josh Brolin and Christian Bale brought to playing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, respectively, but their films called too much attention to their efforts.

By contrast, it took me a third of the way into "The Apprentice" to even realize Sebastian Stan was wearing prosthetic makeup to play Donald Trump, just as Stan underplayed what viewers will likely recognize as Trump's signature behaviors.

Those who recall Trump's media appearances from decades past should recognize an underlying cadence and posture to Stan's portrayal, but Stan's performance draws from characterization rather than mimicry, thereby avoiding "Saturday Night Live" caricatures.

The most surprising trait "The Apprentice" ascribes to Trump is vulnerability, since it's the one trait that the real-life Trump takes care not to display.

Per its title, "The Apprentice" presents Trump, in his younger years, as an aspiring mogul, anxious to get out from under his father's established shadow, and therefore eager to learn from the contentiously cutthroat attorney Roy Cohn (played here by Jeremy Strong, of McKay's "The Big Short" in 2015, as well as HBO's "Succession").

There are no treacly, gratuitously psychoanalytical flashbacks to Trump or Cohn's childhoods, nor does "The Apprentice" make the mistake of "W." or "Vice," by attempting to apply a karmic coda to its narrative, to denote its protagonist's comeuppance, or failure in the eyes of history.

Indeed, "The Apprentice" ends on what arguably qualifies as a triumphal note for Trump, as he meets with the ghostwriter of what would become his 1987 autobiography, "The Art of the Deal."

I couldn't help thinking that Sherman was speaking to the audience through that final scene, when Trump's ghostwriter tries to insist there must be some deeper driving motivation for his subject, and even asks Trump what ultimate purpose he seeks to serve through his professed love of deal-making, only to be told by Trump that "the art of the deal" is an end unto itself.

Watching "The Apprentice" felt like watching the first half of "Scarface," because in spite of Cohn's warnings, we're not even shown the disastrous aftermath of Trump's Atlantic City casino acquisitions, and yet, there is a sense of spiritual rot setting in, simply as a result of Trump and Cohn abiding by their merciless ethos.

Trump studiously adopts Cohn's outlined life strategy of endless attacks on one's opponents, denials of wrongdoing and declarations of victory regardless of the circumstances, but while this approach is intended to show strength and serve as a suit of armor, it becomes a straitjacket for both men, because it doesn't allow them to be weak.

In the film, when a wheelchair-bound Cohn was dying of AIDS, he wept at his American flag birthday cake, and Strong conveyed that those poorly concealed tears stemmed from an existential angst that Cohn couldn't even understand, never mind put into words.

Trump's first future ex-wife is shown bearing the brunt of his similar soul sickness, which is foreshadowed when he tells Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova) there are only "killers" and "losers," which necessarily connotes that the only way he can relate to someone is to "kill" them.

Sure enough, while Trump admits to Ivana that he's initially attracted to her because of her independent spirit, his subsequent complaints to Cohn and Ivana herself make clear he can't remain attracted to someone who's anything like an equal partner to him, nor can he tolerate her attempts to console him after the death of his brother.

As dazzling as "The Apprentice" is in contextualizing Cohn and Trump's personalities within the societal excesses of the 1970s and '80s, I could almost imagine this film as a two-man stage play, based on the strength of Strong and Stan's performances, because at heart, it's about a veteran general who takes an up-and-coming warlord under his wing.

While a traditional tragedy ascribes its protagonists' downfall to their disregard for what they've learned, out of hubris, Trump and Cohn's relationship turns sour precisely because Trump is so devout in applying Cohn's ruthless rules for success to his life, since such rules leave no room for weakness, vulnerability or even abiding affection.

The lesson of "The Apprentice," then, is not merely to castigate specific celebrities or political figures, but to illustrate how a self-centered, success-at-all-costs worldview may yield material prosperity, but at the cost of turning one's own identity into the most hellishly confining prison of all.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
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