At the film festival, director Ali Abbasi talks about the rise of Donald Trump in the film ‘The Apprentice’ – a real horror in Cannes.
Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and his student Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) Photo: Apprentice Productions Ontario Inc.
More than half of the competition can already be seen on the Croisette, but there is no clear favorite yet. Drama is one of the favored devices in many films, three of which use the subject of severed fingers, albeit peripherally and for different purposes. In Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Kindness’ This can be seen in Jacques Audiard’s musical melodrama ‘Emilia Perez’ about the sex change of a Mexican narco boss, and David Cronenberg can also be seen in ‘The Shrouds’, a surreal conspiracy comedy about an entrepreneur who develops shrouds with built-in cameras. protagonist some of his limbs.
So far, the films with less extravagant design ideas are more convincing. Director Ali Abbasi chooses a relatively conventional production for his Donald Trump feature film ‘The Apprentice’. He limits the plot to the relatively short period from the 1970s to the late 1980s, when Trump was “just” an entrepreneur and had not yet developed a TV career or serious political ambitions.
Nevertheless, Abbasi brings together all the necessary ingredients needed to become the future ex-president of the United States.
In the beginning you see the young Trump, who is still in the shadow of his dominant father Fred Trump. In the exclusive elite meeting place Le Club, he meets lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), who decides to help the ambitious real estate agent out of financial trouble.
Surpass the master in ruthlessness
Sebastian Stan initially embodies Trump as a smart, somewhat shy young man who is amazed at how Cohn ignores all rules, including the law, to win. Only gradually will this Trump acquire the orange skin color and the broad grin with which you associate the current presidential candidate. Without reaching the level of vulgarity that Trump now represents.
On the one hand, the title cleverly plays on Trump’s later media career, who had his own career from 2004 to 2017. Reality TV show called “The Apprentice”On the other hand, the title indicates how Abbasi wants Trump’s rise to be understood: it shows him as a docile disciple of his mentor Roy Cohn. Trump will eventually surpass his master in unscrupulousness and pass off his master’s rules of success as his own. Including this one: Never admit defeat.
Abbasi marks the transition from one decade to another by changing the film material. Seeing New York in grainy images of the 1970s follows a noisy video look at the beginning of the ‘AIDS decade’, of which Roy Cohn also fell victim in 1986. Towards the end, the images take on a digitally chilly quality, in keeping with the personal development of the antihero.
No matter how much you would like it to, this film will not prevent Trump from being re-elected. No one else could probably do it either. When in doubt, Trump’s supporters take everything said about him, whether critical or not, as confirmation of their views. Abbasi’s portrait simply summarizes who the world is dealing with here with a few carefully placed lines. That’s enough for real horror.
Trump has announced that he wants to take legal action against the film.