Content warning: This article discusses sexual assault.
It’s easy to assume that presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose name has become practically synonymous with a brash, unapologetic, anti-establishment, quasi-legal approach to politics in recent years, invented this approach himself. Director Ali Abbasi’s latest biopic “The Apprentice” aims to set the record straight: almost nothing about Trumpism is original. Trump was merely an “apprentice” to his father and his mentor Roy Cohn, and not, as he may have you believe, a self-made man.
Those who go into “The Apprentice” expecting a scandalous exposé of Trump’s rise to political prominence will be disappointed. The movie takes place in the years leading up to Cohn’s death in 1986, around 30 years before Trump entered the 2016 presidential race. It offers only the occasional forebodings of Trump’s eventual political career. The attention is instead directed on the relationship between Trump and Cohn, who, as the movie alleges, was largely responsible for shaping Trump’s now-infamous public persona.
The film’s strong suit is undoubtedly Jeremy Strong, who plays Roy Cohn. Strong became famous for his portrayal of Kendall Roy on the Emmy-winning Max show “Succession,” a character somewhat similar to Trump: a spoiled, man-child scion of a tyrannical father. In fact, while watching “The Apprentice,” I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching Strong teach Sebastian Stan how to play the part of Roy.
Strong’s Roy Cohn never lets us forget that he is the same man responsible for the controversial execution of Ethel Rosenberg on charges of espionage, as well as much of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s political scheming. Despite being a consummate scumbag, Strong’s Cohn is still a human being, and we can’t help but sympathize when he ends up balking at the very same monster he created. Beyond breathing life into the reviled Cohn, Strong’s masterful performance also helps enunciate Trump’s depravity — if even someone like Cohn is appalled by his behavior, where does that leave the rest of us?
If Trump as a human being didn’t hold such a tight grip on American social consciousness, “The Apprentice” would be a somewhat boring movie. Barring a brilliant acting display by Strong, there’s not much to recommend about the movie based on its own merit. The story of a man corrupted by wealth and power is familiar to the point of being hackneyed: the romance with Ivana Trump is one-dimensional, the family drama is poignant but also relatively scant and the cinematography is nothing to write home about.
But Trump is an object of perverse fascination for most of us, and it’s for precisely that reason the film is such a riveting watch. It’s incredibly difficult, at least for me, to wrap my mind around how such an unabashedly narcissistic and destructive human being could come to be, and “The Apprentice” actually resolves that cognitive discomfort. There is something weirdly satisfying about hearing Cohn shamelessly instruct the former president to “attack, attack, attack,” to “admit nothing, deny everything” and “claim victory and never admit defeat,” knowing that these “three rules for winning” will go on to become Trump’s political philosophy. In the same way, it’s satisfying to see that one of the most important figures in Trump’s life was such a repugnant, hypocritical crook.
It is similarly satisfying to see him guiltily weep when his brother, Fred Trump Jr., succumbs to alcoholism, to see that underneath the pugnacious exterior there is a tiny, sniveling and insecure child. And, of course, it’s great to hear Trump’s trademark phrases — “like you wouldn’t believe” and “the best you’ve ever seen” — rendered so perfectly by Stan.
I firmly believe that “The Apprentice” is a movie that every American ought to watch, if only for the sake of seeing what the man currently up for reelection is really made of. Trump fought tooth and nail in court to keep this movie out of theaters, and for good reason. If you can watch him bribe his way through several court cases, ignore his alcoholic brother’s desperate pleas for help, burn through millions of dollars just to look rich, rape his wife, and still vote for him, then there’s absolutely nothing that will ever change your mind.
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