Director: Ali Abbasi
Stars: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova
After gaudily seeking grim thrills chronicling a predator in his Iran-set serial killer picture Holy Spider and having sent Ellie and Joel into harm’s way confronting pious cannibals in HBO’s The Last of Us, it seems only fitting that Ali Abbasi continue his investigations into disgustingly banal evil with this totally unwanted Donald Trump biopic.
There’s precious little art to the deal struck here between filmmakers and audience, and the timing of The Apprentice might seem intended as topical, but in truth it feels like yet another overindulgence in a heinous public figure who’s hogged the limelight for far too long as it is. And, given that this grimy biopic goes to great lengths to assuage Trump of much of the responsibility for his own legacy, it feels gun-shy if not borderline reprehensible. An act of passing the buck, so to speak.
Sebastian Stan’s having a bit of a great year. The release of The Apprentice so close to career-high A Different Man certainly shows off his adaptability and malleability. And plucky nepo-baby Donald Trump circa 1973 seems just as impressionable, sized up skulking the exclusive clubs of upper-class New York by vampiric lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Cohn – one of the city’s most hateful and self-hating public figures – takes the boyish Trump under his wing, molding him into a guileless prodigy, creating a monster in his own image. Cohn’s homosexuality – his worst-kept secret – is presently fairly flatly, but Trump’s relationship to him is painted more like that of a surrogate son, underscored by Martin Donovan’s gravely disapproving turn as cantankerous Trump patriarch Fred. What we’re sold here is an image of Trump as a naive silver-spooned baby ready to sell his soul because daddy never loved him.
Now, many of those things may be true, but The Apprentice is keen to simplify the narrative, and often gives Trump a little too much benefit of the doubt. Cohn is presented as an inhuman villain akin to the evil, pallid emperor from the Star Wars series, and Donnie is – just as often – simply his weak-willed little padawan. It allows for plenty of comic set-ups intended to mock the both of them (Trumpy-wumpy throwing up on the sidewalk; Cohn glowering like he’s auditioning for Nosferatu), but when playing in this mode its hard not to think of The Apprentice as an SNL skit that’s been allowed to spool out unchecked.
The Apprentice gets queasily interesting whenever it asks us to approach Trump in more complicated ways (which is all-too-rare). The inexorable descent of his brother Freddy (Charlie Carrick) muddies the waters, allowing a level of depth and conflict in Donald otherwise underdeveloped. When he fights off tears at his brother’s passing – evidently ashamed of this display of emotion in front of his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) – it creates a knotty sense of pathos that even the staunchest Trump-hater will have to reconcile with. There’s even a modicum of empathy reserved for Cohn come the end of the picture, when the diminished bastard seems to finally realise the nightmare he’s created, and his powerlessness to stop it.
Most of the time, however, this is a limply satirical biopic-by-numbers, one that seems just as ambivalent about corruption, truth and fidelity as its protagonists. Aside from a few impoverished-looking local residents crowing in the background against Trump’s tax credits, the effect of the man’s backhanded deal-making on America isn’t particularly investigated. There’s an amorphous understanding that his empire is built upon shaky foundations, but no real sense of the true precariousness. Only a puppet show with a fluffy-haired Alan Partridge figure at its centre. Stan is worryingly good at his impersonation, charting a slow development of tics and gestures. Strong is funny, but again nothing beyond a farcical caricature.
Bakalova, for her part, is given next to nothing to contribute. A truly unpleasant scene of marital rape sits squarely in the middle of the picture for the sake of its own wretchedness, to further damn the name of Trump, but its effect on Ivana isn’t even considered. Indeed, she’s barely seen again. It becomes just another non-sequitor of ugliness in a parade of human garbage.
This uninterested approach means that The Apprentice serves no real purpose. For those who find Trump horrifying, it’s a roll in the muck and a chance to guffaw and finger-point while the criminality rolls on. For his cultists, nothing is interrogated with the intent to dissuade continued, blinkered adoration. Grotesque as it all is, it’s all a little soft-serve. The Jordan Belfortification of America’s chief slime ball.
The Lost Highway Hotel 