The Apprentice — Cannes 2024 Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Jis financier ne paise diye usney film ko disavow kar diya hai.
Producers ko cease and desist letter gaya hua hai. Toh mean yeh film release hogi ya nahi, can’t say, but when it does come out, I’m a little concerned, karti hoon explain aao.
If anything a look back at American pop culture from 2015–2016 has taught us, that the more fun you poke at Donald Trump, the more his loyal fan base seems to get energized, and invigorated to support him. Just last week, after being criminally indicted on THIRTY-FOUR counts, I read a report on how a lifelong Republican decided to start donating her actual money to Trump’s campaign because American laws and systems were being “misused” by the Democrats. Observing America from the outside this past decade, as someone in my 30s, meaning with a decent understanding of the world, has been bewildering. Now in 2024, if skeptics and loyalists both are to be believed, Donald Trump might just return to the White House.
Who then is this Ali Abbasi’s film serving, I wondered.
Sure, art doesn’t overtly need to serve anything, art exists because that’s just how humanity evolves. However, a film on a real-life figure, as polarizing and as RELEVANT, as CURRENT as Donald Trump, cannot just be art for art’s sake, it’s almost a document, a record of the times we live in.
Abbasi’s gaze on Donald Trump certainly is not one of admiration. But when we tell stories of great supervillains, there always somehow is a somewhat begrudging layer of admiration hidden beneath “but he did terrible things”. Raavan ne Sita ka haran kiya, lekin mahaa vidwaan bhi tha ya Adolf Hitler PAINTING badhiya banaata tha, yeh bataa ke inko humanize karne waale log bohot hain, aur pehla mauka milte hi Goodfellas ke Jimmy Conway evam LOTR ke Sauron ke dikhaaye raasto par chalne ko tatpar hain.
So when you get long stretches of Donald’s origin story back when he was a hustler and a visionary who at one point used to go door to door collecting rent from renters for his father’s business, you’re not telling his fans how his organization exploited disadvantaged black members of society, you’re showing them a man who came from little means and made it to the White House, because everyone knows how the story ends, its next chapter in unfolding in front of our eyes right now. When Sebastian Stan’s Trump begs and pleads with his associates to see the potential of New York City real estate during the time the city wasn’t doing well, you’re reminding viewers of the business acumen of this guy who had bigger aspirations than all around him and every one who treated him as a joke, well didn’t become POTUS.
So then, how DOES one tell the Donald Trump story? Again, I reiterate, Abbasi is no Trump fan, we see the dark side of money and fame very clearly in his film. The monster hidden inside Donald awakes multiple times — as he builds casinos, his rolls the dice on real people’s lives, including his collaborators, his wife. As I saw and abridged version of him climbing the ladder of success, his waist girth increasing, hairline depleting, my overwhelming fear was, but how will his fans react? If people are willing to forgive this man for causing an insurrection, for being impeached, for paying hush money, for saying most derogatory things about women, and now for THIRTY FOUR crimes, wont they forgive him the one scene where he’s shown molesting his wife, chalking that up to a man being a man, or the filmmaker’s personal agenda? Wont they forgive him for leaving his attorney and advisor Roy Cohn to rot in the dust because he was just too weak to continue to remain a part of his team? He did the same to the Brietbart guy Steve Bannon, to his own Vice President Mike Pence, not do the loyalists not care, they seemingly encourage it?
Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn is very very good btw. As one of Donald’s early mentors, you see Roy losing weight and health the longer his association with Donald goes on as the latter keeps getting literally bigger, metaphorically sucking the life out of those closest to him. In a wonderful scene, Roy’s memorial is taking place at Mar-A-Lago, as Trump gets scalp surgery to cover up his bald patch. This is supposed to send a chill down your spine and illustrate how nothing came in the way of this man and his insatiable greed and vanity.
But those who know this, know this. And for those who don’t, I think it may be clear their minds cannot be changed through subtly edited montages. Kyunki Goodfellas ke Jimmy Conway aur LOTR k a Sauron met their eventual sticky ends, but asli Donald toh jeeta na.
Roy Cohn is the guy in the tanning bed with the orange skin, an appearance Donald took on later in life, but the film cuts before you even begin to THINK about THAT Trump and the irreparable damage his rise and subsequent Presidency was going to cause to America and the world. We see him setting up businesses, we don’t see them go bankrupt. The Apprentice is the portrait of a man on the rise, inaugurating his lavish Trump Tower, sitting down with a biographer, gazing longing at an American Flag.
I don’t claim to be VERY familiar with Abbasi’s work, but I have seen some and his 2022 movie Holy Spider about a journalist investigating a serial killer who exclusively murdered sex workers, got under my skin like few other movies have, I strongly recommend watching if you haven’t. For The Apprentice I anticipated a much harsher and a more decisive look at his subject. Aside from very strong Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong performances and some fun easter eggs like finding out where Donald co-opted his MAGA slogan from, him talking about his interest in setting up Wrestling businesses, and him meeting Andy Warhol I think(?), The Apprentice left me neither hot nor cold. Which in a place like Cannes, about a man like Donald, was more a defeat than a triumph, the longer I thought about it.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, The Apprentice is……400–500 words likhne ka socha tha iss film par, ki apni Indian janta ko context nahi hai zyada, par karte karte ho gaye hain 1200.My name is Sucharita, thank you for stopping by.
