The Apprentice Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Jis financier ne paise diye usney film ko disavow kar diya hai.
Producers ko cease and desist letter chala gaya. Par PHIR bhi film release ho rahi hai iss week.
Par, I’m a little concerned, karti hoon explain aao.
Today come let’s take a look at Ali Abbasi’s ‘The Apprentice’ starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump.
If anything, a look back at American pop culture from 2015–2016 has taught us, it’s 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 a few months ago, after being criminally indicted on THIRTY-FOUR counts, I read a report on how someone 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. In 2024, Donald Trump is trying to return to the White House. His popularity has never been higher.
Who then is this Ali Abbasi’s film serving, I wondered.
Sure, art doesn’t need to serve anything, art exists and evolves with humanity. 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—political, insightful, inciting.
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 approval hidden way 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 wahi log, pehla mauka milte hi LOTR ke Sauron ke dikhaaye raasto par chalne ko bhi tatpar hain.
So in ‘The Apprentice’ 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 for his father’s business, you ARE telling his fans how his organization exploited disadvantaged black members of society, but you’re also showing them a man who did the leg work before he made it to the White House. Everyone KNOWS how Donald Trump’s story unfolds, it's happening 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 back 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 everyone who treated him as a joke, well didn’t become POTUS.
So then, how DOES one tell the Donald Trump story? Again, I reiterate, that Abbasi is no Trump fan, we see the dark side of money and fame very clearly in his film. The monster hidden inside Donald awakens multiple times — as he builds casinos, he rolls the dice on real people’s lives, including his collaborators, and his wife. As I saw an abridged version of him climbing the ladder of success, his waist girth increasing, and hairline depleting, my overwhelming fear was, but how will his fans react to this? 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, immigrants, and Muslims, and now for THIRTY-FOUR crimes, won't 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? Will they forgive him for leaving his attorney and advisor Roy Cohn to rot in the dust because he was just too weak? He did the same to the Brietbart guy Steve Bannon, to his own Vice President Mike Pence. The loyalists don’t care, rather 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 LOTR ka Sauron met his eventual sticky end, but asli Donald toh jeet gaya 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 has caused 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 the American National 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 his meeting Andy Warhol I think(?), The Apprentice left me neither hot nor cold. In a place like the Cannes Film Festival, where I watched it, a man like Donald, was more a defeat than a triumph, the longer I thought about it.
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