By Jake Wilson
THE APPRENTICE ★★★
(MA) 122 minutes
Foes and admirers might agree that impersonating Donald Trump is a losing proposition: no matter how broad you go, you’re bound to look pathetically cautious next to the original. Still, there are moments in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice when Sebastian Stan’s performance creates an uncanny effect, especially in dimly lit close-up.
Sebastian Stan portrays Donald Trump in the former president’s man-about-town era.
The credit goes partly to the make-up team, but also the effort Stan has put into capturing the familiar mannerisms: the hoarse, pleading salesman’s voice, the smirking and pouting, the chin pulled in while the eyes wander upward.
The Apprentice is an origin story, following the adventures of young Mr Trump as an ambitious New York property developer and man about town. It’s also a buddy movie, centred on the hero’s bond with an older, eccentric mentor – a format recognisable from showbiz biopics such as Elvis and Ed Wood.
The mentor is the notorious lawyer, political fixer and anti-communist zealot Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) who tutors our hero in the art of winning at all costs while offering the emotional support seldom provided by the chilly Trump senior (Martin Donovan).
Jeremy Strong (left) as Roy Cohn, the lawyer who takes a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) under his wing.Credit: Madman
It’s an encounter that changed history, or so Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman would have us believe. The Trump we meet in the 1970s is in the larval stage – pale, puffy and far from self-assured; it takes the physically slight but relentlessly aggro Cohn to mould him into the man we know, inspiring everything from his penchant for spray tan to the grander ambitions that will lead him to the White House.
As presented here, Cohn is also an archetypal closeted gay conservative, whose grim worldview is rooted in self-loathing – and whose love for Trump isn’t altogether fatherly, even if neither man can face the implications of this head-on.
How far any of this coincides with literal truth is naturally open to debate. To a degree, Abbasi covers his tracks by highlighting the layers of unreality, simulating the period look of TV news broadcasts in the manner of Pablo Larrain. Where Strong’s Cohn has layers and an imaginable inner life, Stan’s Trump remains a skilful caricature – though in fairness it’s hard to picture what a non-caricatured portrait of Trump could look like.
Regardless, there’s something fascinating about the imagined dynamic between the pair, including Trump’s willingness to accept Cohn more or less at face value. By comparison, Maria Bakalova doesn’t have much to do as Trump’s first wife Ivana, portrayed initially as a level-headed gold-digger, then as a victim of Trump the sexual predator – a subject the film appears to be addressing from a sense of obligation while struggling to integrate it into a semi-satiric framework.
That points to the central difficulty with The Apprentice: there are two movies here which never quite align. One depicts Trump and Cohn as beneath contempt, piling on all the damaging biographical material the filmmakers have at their disposal. The other, despite everything, is almost sentimental – as if to say, isn’t it sweet how these two weirdos found each other at the right moment?
The Apprentice is released in cinemas on October 10.
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