Ali Abbasi opens The Apprentice with a moment that historically shook the faith of the American people in the integrity of the highest political office in the land, the downfall of Richard Nixon. Never had a President faced such televised scrutiny. America had been awash in corruption for years, but for a President to become so inexorably linked to it, that to this day, his nickname is ‘Dirty Dick’ was unprecedented. In the contemporary world people are so accustomed to political corruption that the question isn’t so much whether a politician is corrupt, rather if they are corrupt within an ‘acceptable limit.’
Which brings us to the primary subject of Abbasi’s origin story of narcissistic sociopathy; Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan). It’s 1973 (ish) and the young Trump is regaling an uninterested date in a private club about the careers of all powerbrokers in the room. She excuses herself to powder her nose, never to return. In a VIP room a figure stares at the gormless man. Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) decides he needs help and thus begins a poisonous mentorship, the results of which are part of the concrete contemporary experience of all Americans.
Abbasi and writer Gabriel Sherman introduce Roy Cohn and the extent of his barbed wire spiderweb of power in a scene where Donald J. Trump sits in mostly awed bafflement. Cohn is still congratulating himself for sending the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Commies are worse than Nazis. America needs protecting from “lefty, liberal, pinko faggots.” The table is attended by known mobsters. Everyone has someone in their pocket, or they can get them. Trump is just “Fred Trump’s kid,” at this point and his family is about to go broke because of lawsuit involving Trump senior’s housing complex and discriminatory renting practices. Cohn tells the now near salivating Donald the lawsuit is bullshit and it he should counter sue. Donald doesn’t have Cohn’s power or savvy – but with the man’s hand grasping his thigh, he’s about to become a protégé.
The New York City of the mid-1970s is in a financial and social depression. These are the years Martin Scorsese made famous in Taxi Driver. Donald Trump sees opportunity on the mean streets. A luxury hotel opposite Grand Central Station. No one is going to deal with Fred Trump’s kid – especially not until that lawsuit is gone. At home Fred Trump (Martin Donovan) is a patriarch with ice in his veins. He’s a ‘killer’ – the killer instinct being the winning instinct. He’s ashamed that his eldest son Fred Jr. a pilot and alcoholic (Charley Carrick) chose to “drive busses with wings.” Donald is little more than his obedient lackey. His wife Mary Anne (Catherine McNally) tries to keep Fred’s cruelty in check, but he’s a bully and a bigot.
Donald the apple that didn’t fall far from his paternal tree, needs to find a way to both impress and compete with Fred and Roy Cohn is precisely the man for the job. A distorted mirror of Fred Trump who wraps himself in the flag of America needing to return to its ‘glory days’ to ensure its future. Both men lack a moral compass, but only Cohn will gift Donald his attention and something for Cohn which feels like friendship. He takes on the discrimination lawsuit (he wins with blackmail as a backup), and he teaches Donald his three rules for success. Attack; if threatened go on a pre-emptive take no prisoners campaign. Deny; never admit to anything. Claim victory; write reality so you always come out the winner even if you are losing.
Cohn’s rules are assisted by another rule. “Make your own rules.” Donald walks into the world of blackmail, organised crime, illegal “everything” – if you’re indicted, you’re invited. Donald is shocked at first by Cohn’s decadence – drug fuelled parties, Cohn’s homosexuality, his flagrant disregard for the law, especially as a lawyer. But as the ultimate fixer and seemingly bulletproof – Donald leans on him for everything he can get. What he gets is how to be the ‘killer’ – the art of the payoff, the bribe, the lie so large no one can question it. He gets The Commodore and Hyatt, he gets the mayor, he gets the tax breaks, he gets to outstrip his father, and he gets someone who tells him, “You are America.”
Donald also gets fashion model Ivana Zelníčková (Maria Bakalova). Abbasi shows the courtship as something earnest for Donald. He adores Ivana and her drive to be a businesswoman. Her energy matches his own (at least at first) and for a time it does appear to be the fairytale romance of the society pages. Ivana is one of three characters given some level of sympathy in the film. The others being Fred Jr., and Mary Anne. Some might argue The Apprentice is partially sympathetic to Roy Cohn but showing the man losing his power and being deserted by those who clung to him is not begging pity from the audience. Cohn, like many powerbrokers, wanted to be liked (Jeremy Strong brings this aspect of him to the fore) but he thrived on being feared.
Trump’s rise through the late 1970s and into the era of American “greed is great” of the Reagan administration, and his increasingly bad deals made in Atlantic City don’t quite make for the stuff of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, but Abbasi is treading carefully because many of the people involved (including the protagonist) are alive and historically litigious. Roger Stone and Rupert Murdoch. The accusation that Abbasi and Gabriel Sherman do not dive deeply enough will be made, but what is on the screen is still coldly damning and as pitiless as the two people it portrays.
Donald Trump rises, Roy Cohn falls. Trump ignores his former mentor to his detriment and to his advantage. Gone is the young man needing polish and guidance and in his place is an amphetamine addicted, overweight, balding, showman and huckster staving off one bankruptcy with the next investment in a gaudy playground. When asked about politicians Trump replies they’re mostly idiots who need him – he’s already more powerful than they are. Earlier he joked in an interview if his real estate empire ever fell, he’d run for President.
The Apprentice features incredible performances by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. Stan isn’t doing an impersonation of Trump, although he has studied his mannerisms and speech patterns. He gets inside of the man – a vain and incurious fool whose only talent was bamboozlement. It’s transformative work by Stan. Strong captures Cohn’s immense skill as a predator, his externalised self-loathing, and his opportunism. He chose Donald Trump and in his own way he loved him – but he also set the relationship up as quid pro quo. “Your job as my client is to make me look good,” he tells Trump early on. They’re both monsters of the same stripe and Strong perfectly inhabits the unblinking man whose AIDS memorial quilt read “Bully, Coward, Victim.”
The Apprentice doesn’t shock the audience with audacity – although there are scenes such as Trump’s liposuction and scalp surgery that bring home his grotesque narcissism which are somehow more blatant than showing him knocking Ivana to the ground and raping her. The reason for the lack of shock is the audience knows who Donald J Trump is. We have seen and heard him say deranged, dangerous, and offensive lies so often, that no film can live up to the grotesque reality.
The Apprentice succeeds in capturing the era that enabled Trump to become ‘somebody’ and his lifelong venality and mendacity. Roy Cohn died in debt, disbarred, and disowned – but his legacy of being the vilest and meanest of men has a physical embodiment. The Apprentice can be lurid, shallow, and hollow like Trump himself – it shows how the homunculus emerged and grew outsized. The American nightmare is someone’s American dream, and that’s the horror.
Director: Ali Abbasi
Cast: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova
Writer: Gabriel Sherman
Producers: Ali Abbasi, Daniel Bekerman, Julianne Forde, Jacob Jarek, Louis Tisne, Ruth Treacy
Music: Martin Dirkov, David Holmes, Brian Irvine
Cinematography: Kasper Tuxen
Editors: Olivier Bugge Coutté, Olivia Neergaard-Holm
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