A Tale of Two Insecure Men, aka The Apprentice
The Apprentice begins with President Nixon’s famous “I’m not a crook” speech, where he claimed in the wake of an ongoing Watergate investigation that he had never personally profited from public service, and maintained that he’s “earned everything he’s got.” That’s an appropriate and scary way to begin this film. After all, we know how Nixon’s (and Trump’s) story plays out. The audience’s foreknowledge is The Apprentice’s biggest hurdle, wanting to shed light on a well-documented figure when that figure remains in the headlines today. I wonder what the point of The Apprentice is, aside from providing a showcase for its stars? It doesn’t feel like a cautionary tale, nor does it take any creative liberties with exposing blame. Instead, The Apprentice is a straight-laced historical re-enactment (with some embellishments) of how a few men with deep insecurities played by their own corrupt rules to gain power.
The Apprentice takes place from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s in New York City, where a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) meets the infamous big-time lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who helps Trump skirt rules and regulations to realize the young man’s dream of building Trump Tower. We see Trump get the taste of wealth and power that transforms him into the egotistical, sexist, corrupt monster that we all know and half the country seems to love. The film subtly suggests that Trump wasn’t already a power-hungry crook before meeting Cohn, but rather, was just an unintelligent loser with bad ideas who continuously failed to impress his rich father, Fred Trump. Viewers may take exception with that narrative, like I did. Viewers may also take exception with the morsels of sympathy the film aims to elicit from Trump’s interactions with his disapproving family, or from Cohn’s final years battling AIDS (but never admitting to the diagnosis). No morsels from me, thank you very much.
Again, I ask myself, what’s the point of ‘The Apprentice’? Well, Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong are mesmerizing. The former goes through a gradual physical and affectual transformation, carrying himself and capturing the mannerisms of his real life counterpart. Strong is menacing and mischievous as Cohn, carrying deep secrets buried beneath a stoic and confident public-facing persona. Maria Bakalova is also commendable as Trump’s first wife, Ivana, though she isn’t given much to do and could have very well carried her own version of this story akin to Priscilla, complete with abuse, neglect, and fish-out-of-water experiences. But returning to the previous question: The Apprentice aims to shine a spotlight on the great-lengths insecure men will go to in order to “achieve” power and status. The film uses Trump and Cohn to relay this message, though now may be too soon for many people to stomach such an exploration. If you already despise Trump, you won’t gain any new insight from the film. If you love Trump, you’ll probably believe The Apprentice is a phony representation. However, in defense of director Ali Abbasi (The Last of Us) and writer Gabriel Sherman (The Loudest Voice), who chose to make a film on this subject with relative impartiality, not many men in history have been as insecure and narcissistic as the individuals represented in The Apprentice, nor have many reached such unfathomable heights through their corruption. So for many viewers, this story could unlock a new critical understanding of how they (and we) got here.
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The Apprentice opens in theaters on Friday, October 11th.
