The commercial failure of The Apprentice has nothing to do with the film’s quality. The mirrored reasons are uncomplicated when you think about it: those who hate Trump have no desire to spend two hours watching a narrative film about him, and those who love Trump have no desire to watch a narrative film that is critical of him. And let’s be clear—without being heavy-handed (the facts speak for themselves), The Apprentice is critical of Trump just by showing who he is.
Trump was an apprentice himself to Roy Cohn—one of the most despicable citizens the United States has ever known. Cohn was a gifted attorney but a venal man who used his talents to ruin the lives of many during the red scare of McCarthyism. Cohn led the charge for the Rosenbergs’ execution on what we now know was questionable evidence. He was a self-loathing Jew and homosexual who, in the most repugnant ways possible, disparaged those who identified as such. A master of dirty tricks, if a legal loophole existed, Cohn would find it. If one did not exist, he would resort to blackmail—often by recording the conversations of his targets and threatening to reveal embarrassing or even career-ending details about their personal lives. The fact that he had a brilliant mind and put it toward such wicked intentions makes him all the worse.
Roy Cohn was the kind of man who staunchly believed that you never admit you were wrong; the truth is whatever you say it is, and to never back down an inch. If you’re not attacking, you are losing—and Cohn is the man at whose bootheel the fledgling real estate magnate Donald Trump learned. I don’t believe in referring to human beings as “monsters”—it’s far too easy a pejorative to attach to people who engage in monstrous activities. It is important to remember that a person did that awful thing, not some fictional creature. Regarding Roy Cohn, though, I am tempted to make an exception.
The Apprentice (directed by Ali Abassi) begins with the duplicitous “I am not a crook” speech given by Richard Nixon just before his downfall. At the time, Nixon’s crimes and eventual resignation seemed like the nadir of modern presidential politics. As many of us have learned (and are about to be reminded), one should never think things can’t get worse.
However, The Apprentice is not about Trump as president (though Trump alludes to the possibility in the film). The Apprentice is akin to a supervillain origin story. In the early going of the film, Trump is shown as uncertain and desperate as he and his tyrannical father Fred (a brilliant Martin Donovan) are under fire for not fairly renting to “blacks” in their apartment complexes. We even see Trump going door-to-door hassling late-on-rent tenants like a slumlord who does his own wet work. He is a low-rent man chasing down those who can’t afford their rent.
Trump is played by Sebastian Stan, an actor whom I would never have pictured as “The Donald.” Stan is the “Winter Soldier,” well-built, handsome, and charismatic in a non-repugnant way. In short, everything Trump is not. But as I like to say, actors are magicians. Stan doesn’t “impersonate” Trump. He does not take an Alec Baldwin SNL approach. What Baldwin has done on late-night TV is brilliant in mining humor for Trump’s cartoonish behavior, but Stan must create a whole person. Along with some helpful makeup and prosthetics, he does this primarily with his mannerisms, inflection, and by using the familiar Trump vernacular–often speaking of himself in the third person. By the end of a film about how Trump became Trump, we see the complete transformation of Sebastian Stan as well. It’s an astounding performance by an actor I didn’t know had it in him.
As terrific as Stan is, The Apprentice is often stolen by Jeremy Strong’s extraordinary shark-eyed work as Roy Cohn. I have now seen three portrayals of Roy Cohn in productions of significance: James Woods in Citizen Cohn in the 1992 HBO movie and Al Pacino in the landmark mini-series (also on HBO) Angels in America. Strong’s work here bests Woods (and Woods was excellent) and approaches Pacino’s. Should Strong score a Best Supporting Actor nomination, it will be well-earned.
As we see Cohn wiggle father and son Trump out of their racist rental policy and later, through heinous means, gain Donald Trump a complete tax abatement from New York City officials for the building of Trump Tower, we see Trump’s confidence rise. He’s not a man with many skills, but he learns to maximize them through Cohn’s teachings. Whatever charm Trump possesses, its use is entirely transactional. He uses people up, and then he spits them out—even, in a fashion most humiliating, Roy Cohn.
When Cohn becomes fatally ill with AIDS (which Cohn denies, claiming he has liver cancer), his value to Trump diminishes as his health fails. When Cohn can no longer contribute to Trump’s glorification, he is rolled away in a wheelchair with a pair of fake gold and cubic zirconia cufflinks with the name Trump inscribed on them—a “gift” from the man he created.
The film may not cover Trump’s relationship with then-model (and soon, spouse) Ivana to the same degree as his partnership with Cohn, but her and Cohn’s arcs are similar. Ivana (played by Maria Bakalova of Borat sequel fame) meets a fate identical to Cohn’s. At first, Trump is enamored, then bored, as she too becomes disposable. Before their parting, we see Trump do the unthinkable. An argument in which Ivana questions his manhood leads to a brutal rape on the floor below their gold-plated ceiling. At this point, it is made clear that Trump takes what he wants, and when he no longer wants it, he throws it out.
The approach of The Apprentice is very intelligent. The film is smart enough to begin with Trump still holding on to some vestige of humanity. He has major “daddy issues,” and the audience is free to feel a certain sympathy for him as he struggles to impress a patriarch who refuses to see either of his sons as men of value. However, Fred Trump saves the worst of his treatment for Fred Jr., whose profession as an airline pilot Sr. views as an embarrassment. As Fred Jr. free-falls into alcoholism and dies, we see Ivana try to comfort a grieving, petulant Donald Trump. But Trump won’t let her touch him; he doesn’t even want her to look at him. It’s as if the passing of the last person Donald Trump truly cared about removed from him all humanity, conscience, and any future need for either. All that remains is ego and the glory of self. Make no mistake, Trump is held to account here, but not in a voracious, condemning manner. The Apprentice merely presents the man who would be king (thank you, Supreme Court). The fact that his journey is an ugly one is merely due to truth in storytelling, nothing more.
As the movie takes place during the ‘80s, Abbasi hits you with needle drops and an era-appropriate score that, by the end of the film, reminded me of composer Giorgio Moroder’s work on Scarface—a movie about one of the worst fictional human beings in the history of American cinema. The Apprentice is a film about one of the worst real-life people in the history of America. Only Trump isn’t dealing drugs; he’s dealing in confidence, and as it turns out, his methods of malfeasance are far more dangerous than Tony Montana’s. Unlike Montana, Trump’s impact isn’t regional or national but global.
The Apprentice is the prelude to the real-life horror movie we have been living through for more than eight years now, and with as many as four more to go, the film is worth seeing—if just to know how this miserable man came to be. The truth is, unless you are a part of the new American oligarchy, you are going to find out anyway.
The Apprentice is streaming now on Amazon Prime
