Synopsis: A young man called Donald Trump partnered with the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn back in the ’70s and ’80s to establish his real-estate business in New York.
Several films have content in one way or another connecting to the American dream, an American notion of endless opportunities, peace, and prosperity, including Rocky, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Minari. For the most part, these are stories of one or more people who have had their share of struggles and triumphs, not only for themselves but also for their loved ones. Let’s say, however, that there’s a narrative of the American Dream featuring a character who had it all, someone who defied the odds and turned the impossible into the possible through dirty work rather than hard work itself, on ‘The American Story’. Ali Abbasi attempts to do this in his film The Apprentice, which focuses on the construction of Donald J. Trump after everyone knows him in Cannes for Holy Spider.
The Apprentice begins with the words of Richard Nixon when he stated: “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I‘m not a crook. I‘ve earned everything I have. How better could one characterize this man’s checkered life history which culminates in more controversies than achievements?” Such comments and controversies leave little doubt considering that the opening shot features a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) who began his career as the youngest member of a private club, the youngest he was, indeed. This is what Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) does, inviting the young Trump to sit at his lunch table. Cohn did, however, recognize the name Trump, who he discovered in Cohn’s own words “ran into a lot of real estate businesses and became successful”, as the son of Fred Trump who had a lawsuit against him from both the Government and NAACP for racial discrimination in Trump Village. Trump has great respect for Cohn and after a while seeks him out to be his lawyer.
To begin with the Trump-Cohn relationship and end somewhere in the middle of the Shark Attack, it can be said that Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong are at the centre of the scenario. Let’s turn towards Stan. In the movie, Donald Trump is a young man who is ambitious and learns as much as he can, and one is simply in awe of this portrayal. In the first half of The Shark Attack, Cohn also shows how he fails to care about the consequences of crossing a line to gain an advantage this was well depicted through the characters of Stan and Strong, who both become increasingly powerful. When Cohn is present, only then is Trump Chaos Larry’s character comes to life. In a sense, young Trump does seem to be not unlike Stan; impressionable and two-faced. But at the same time, Stan is wont show that sort of sinister side of Cohn. In the first serial, one should not say sequels since nothing has bombed and certainly nothing has been epic, feeding off many of the cliched bits of textbook-style clips that have to be addressed at every telling of the story.
The storyline does seem weak as it appears to be just the beginning of an explanation as to how Trump accumulated money by doing shady deals, blackmail and nothing else. However, when this film moves into its second half where Donald has turned into an overgrown empty shell of a petty power monger, that is the point where The Apprentice begins to deliver.
An interesting style even back then, Ali Abbassi is among those who impertinently draws the character of Trump as a menacing bull. Even though he carefully tried to act lawfully and pursued litigation against this film, one of his spokespersons rather cowardly noted that it ‘hardly belongs in the bright light’, a perspective that might also explain why he eventually chose to ignore it in the first place. The view of the spire, Trump says, endeared many to his cause and he felt invincible, quick to speak his mind and act with impunity. To him not even the horrid woman whom he fondles before raping, his wife, the brother who he hurried to dispose of to meet his demise, or indeed Roy Cohn who introduced him to the industry and watches in horror as Trump becomes a brutal loon, is off limits. As one of the quotes involves Trump, the most powerful businessman in his own words, goes, ‘In life there are killers, there are losers, ’ That is exactly who he is as he leaves everything behind for the insatiable hunger for power.
However, he considers the plights of these individuals as of no importance since the more he grows, literally and metaphorically, the less human he is. Abbasi’s film transitions towards what one may call a Frankenstein horror narrative in that the monster is out and that is for everyone else to handle.
The Apprentice isn’t a movie whose content will greatly surprise or, more accurately? should not surprise you. It is badly stylised, except for Ali Abbasi’s vision, and Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan perform brilliantly this year, but what The Apprentice improves on is to remind those people who may have been entranced by the screen how evil Donald Trump is where it is. It depicts the life of a man who can’t be appreciated in any way, and that is alarming for everyone who watches it.
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