Though many people may think Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice is not a revelation, it is still an entertaining film that stylistically mocks Donald Trump life during 1970s and 1980s with only two hours. Before becoming the United States President or even hosting his own game show, he was sued by New York real estate barons because of racial discrimination, wherein he sought for legal services from Roy Cohn who was an attorney then later the mentor. This is the point where Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman contend Trump’s financial rise and moral descent began. In this way, director creates fascinating character drama which is enhanced by few outstanding acting performances but its political perspective ranges from banal to non-existent.
Portraying someone as recognizable and inherently animated as Trump invites a degree of broad caricature — see also: Brendan Gleason in The Comey Rule — but Abbasi strikes a balance with Sebastian Stan to avoid this pitfall. During the first hour on the other hand, Stan’s depiction of Trump is more reserved and naturalistic with glimpses at his characteristic look (his pursed lips especially). To me it kind of seems like Stan drew inspiration for this role from old interviews with Trump where he appears to be quite simple in nature compared to what we now know him as. I would say even that he looks placid.
Abbasi presents a story about a social climber totally out of his depth in early 1970s through images referencing cinematic trends of that period. On one side, it steers us around using hand-held shots which are rough-textured and give semblance of improvisation characteristic for young independent filmmakers such as John Cassavetes’ gangster movies like Mean Streets; these are a loose imitation though as they segue away into formal control and high visual contrast typical movies produced under New Hollywood genre – Scorsese’s gangster films (such as Mean Streets) when Cohn first met Trump.
Trump’s alleged connections to the mafia, particularly “Fat Tony” Salerno, have made him an obvious choice. This is evident in both The Apprentice and Scorsese’s The Irishman. Nonetheless, Abbasi portrays Trump as the Mozart and Salieri of wealth and power here by revealing his intentions behind the scenes through Cohn’s power-hunger tendencies that he studied closely. Similarly, those same temptations resulted in movies like such as Scarface The Godfather among others shifted the meaning of American Dream in public mind because they showed how it was rotten beneath its shiny image.
Thus, Stan’s version of Trump considers himself as the quintessential embodiment of the American dream: a person who despite being born with a silver spoon still yearns to achieve more than he has and escape from under his father’s tutelage. He is crazy yet determined to succeed in business and industry – isn’t that what drives her if she shadows someone who can do anything to make it?
On another note, Jeremy Strong again delivers an odd performance as Cohn that revolves around vocal and physical change. The true Roy Cohn occasionally shines through this façade (as when he softly speaks some truly evil words), but Strong also plays him like a man on amphetamines with tic-like movements; hence his drug would be stepping on people’s necks or throats. Additionally, he teaches Trump how to become more outgoing due to which Stan soon enough starts meshing together aspects of his personality—his well-known gestures and accentuations—coming at each individual element from within. It is ludicrously speculative firsthand account about a walking cartoonishness but Abbasi plays it straightly especially when Trump meets Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova).
As we move into its second half which takes place during 1980s when Trump arrives in New York City high society before becoming media rising star; there are visual alterations in the directorial style of Abbasi and his cinematographer, Kasper Tuxen. In contrast to the New Hollywood cinema’s radicalism that opposes oppressive systems, Trump becomes the system; hence, ‘80s TV broadcasts with their multi-colored visual artifacts are represented through its frames. Equally, in sync with Stan’s makeover into an approximation of the Trump we know (his voice and body language become more like Trump’s), Abbasi makes his aesthetic seem deliberately cheap.
The second hour of The Apprentice looks like a melodramatic, made-for-TV movie, but it also lives up to that off-putting visual mode with its operatic approach. In A Star is Born fashion, Trump skyrockets and leaves Cohn, his mentor, behind, leading to surprisingly effective and endearing drama. This is very quickly offset by Trump’s obnoxious treatment of those around him; from Cohn and Ivana to relatives who share blood with him – all this culminates in Abbasi’s mission statement: a human being losing humanity and morphing into monsters or grotesque people like himself. His father Fred (played by Martin Donovan) is even more “Trump-y” than he himself ever was which is something Abbasi highlights explicitly.
However, this is also when The Apprentice starts to swipe at the lowest-hanging fruit, reminiscent of Oliver Stone’s flimsy George W. Bush biopic W. Mercifully, it doesn’t go overboard in its attempts to satirize Trump as a modern-day politician but it does leave a lot of barefaced or familiar trails which do not add any dramatic or narrative value other than to serve as reminders that the person we are actually watching is Donald Trump.
This is all as far as movie’s own political entanglements go anyway. Given how focused on Trump’s daily life it is rather than his place in the world and his relationship with it beyond his opulent dictator chic penthouse; it had very little space for wider exploration in the first place. The end result lies somewhere in a middle ground that lacks any real perspective for these political statements except for them being just gestures.
In contrast, Armageddon Time by director James Gray — which was set like-wise in 1980s New York and also featured Jeremy Strong — worked much better both as an uncanny premonition and a trumpian drama about society’s underlying anxieties even without Donald Trump himself (though Fred Trump does appear fleetingly). Even Abbasi’s previous movies such as Iranian feminist thriller Holy Spider and European refugee fantasy Border have still maintained their emotional intensity while being anchored to the bigger world around them. In comparison, however, this is merely a “good” movie from Iran-Denmark Director resulting from him having nothing profound to state about Trump or America.
Nevertheless, despite its shortcomings as a political film (especially considering that it is a biopic about the president), The Apprentice perfectly captures America during the time of Donald Trump on either side of the political spectrum through its cast. On one hand, there is something distasteful about how familiar Trump seems with people like him who can give up their humanity for appearances of success even if they have little or nothing beneath the surface. On the other hand, The Apprentice as a film is an exercise in futility; it shows that this type of aesthetic critique cannot capture any moral or political decay on its own without going deeper and offering anything more useful.
Conclusion
Sebastian Stan gives a committed lead performance, literally building up his young Donald Trump from scratch on set, that makes Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice enjoyable to watch thanks in large part to its self-reflexive visual references to different media eras in which each half is situated. Yet outside of observing contemporary Trump-like traits being acquired from all the wrong influences around him, there is hardly any insight one would expect from such a biographical movie about one of the most significant political figures in 21st century history.
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