The Apprentice
First, a word about Donald J. Trump. Like so many, I’m completely flabbergasted that voters of any political persuasion would consider putting this man back in the White House. Not only is his campaign a policy-free zone, he’s unable to focus on any issue beyond his immediate self-interest. To advance that sacred cause he will do and say anything, no matter how extreme or dangerous. He is not concerned about the harm caused by his lies and grievances, just as he had no concern that people might die from COVID-19 – apart from his dear friend, Vladimir Putin, who received a special secret shipment of coronavirus testing kits when governors across America were crying out for help.
Trump’s current platform calls for mass deportations, huge concentration camps, replacing taxation with ruinous tariffs, further tax cuts for billionaires, trashing environmental protections, abolishing the education department, firing career public servants and replacing them with stooges, removing universal health care in favour of something he hasn’t thought of yet, and most probably taking the U.S. out of NATO, leaving Ukraine to go it alone. Oh, yes, he’s also making a special job for Elon Musk, the billionaire with the mind of a badly behaved 12-year-old, so he can cut every item of government expenditure he doesn’t like. Trump’s loyal acolyte, General Mike Flynn, has suggested that his leader’s political enemies should be prosecuted as traitors, and perhaps executed.
If we factor in those increasingly demented ramblings about sharks, flies, pet-eating Haitians, and how the Democrats want to ban cows and windows, you can see what an attractive package Trump presents to the average American. No wonder more than 30 million of them seem to find him irresistible.
It's a mystery as to how many of his fans will be lining up to see Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, a tale of Trump’s early years he has denounced as “FAKE and CLASSLESS”. While the title plays on the reality TV program that made Trump a household name, it also refers to his ‘apprenticeship’ under Roy Cohn, one of the most notorious lawyers ever to stand before the courts. As a young prosecutor with the Department of Justice, Cohn took pride in having sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. He went on to be special counsel assisting Senator Joe McCarthy in the anti-communist show trials of the 1950s. In later life he became the lawyer-of-choice for mobsters such as Fat Tony Salerno and Carmine Galante. For full disclosure, check out Matt Tyrnauer’s 2019 documentary, Where’s My Roy Cohn?
If I tell you that Abbasi and his scriptwriter, Gabriel Sherman, portray Cohn as a more sympathetic character than Trump, it gives you a rough idea of what to expect from this film. This impression owes a debt to Jeremy Strong, who plays Cohn as a nuanced personality, revelling in his mean, tough guy reputation, but still knowing how to turn on the charm. When his health begins to deteriorate towards the end, he seems almost touchingly vulnerable.
Sebastian Stan, as Trump, has a very different challenge: How does one get inside the head of an emerging sociopath? Such creatures don’t feel the same emotions as ordinary people, but they can learn how to fake it. The elderly Trump may rage against everyone and everything, but the youthful version was far more circumspect, being no less narcisssistic, but acutely aware of the need to win over powerful people if he is to achieve his goals. He’s not especially concerned whether he succeeds by means fair or foul - through the courts, bribery or blackmail. What’s important is that he wins. In his own mind, he deserves it.
We see Trump as he goes around knocking on doors in shabby apartment blocks, trying to collect rent. It’s a long way from his dreams of being King of Manhattan. Roy Cohn will be the mentor who helps him realise his manifest destiny.
The story begins in 1973, with a 27-year-old Trump approaching Cohn at a swanky restaurant, begging the famous lawyer to help him and his father, who are facing government prosecution for discrimination against African-American tenants. Cohn eventually agrees to take on the case, not without first humiliating the tee-totalling Trump by making him drink successive glasses of vodka.
The lawyer will introduce the would-be mogul to three abiding principles: “Attack, attack, attack; Admit nothing, deny everything; Claim victory and never admit defeat.” Sound familiar? They have become Trump’s mantra, repeated in his book, The Art of the Deal(1987), and given a regular airing in all his business and political dealings.
Cohn can see the potential in young Donald, although they have very different natures. Trump is made uncomfortable when he attends a decadent party at Cohn’s place, and spies Roy engaged in a homosexual orgy. This is not his bag – he’s much more comfortable flashing the cash and pursuing blonde, Czech model, Ivana Zelničková (Maria Bakalova) who will become his first wife. Even with this romance, he takes Cohn’s advice, making his fiancée sign a pre-nuptial agreement that sends her into a rage.
With Cohn’s help, Trump pulls off a series of real estate coups in a rundown market, starting with the decrepit Commodore Building, which he transforms into a luxury hotel, and culminating in Trump Tower. On the way he plunges into the casino business in Atlantic City, overreaches – against Cohn’s advice – and goes bust. Abbasi glides over this dip in Trump’s fortunes, being more focussed on showing how, in this instance, crime and treachery seem to pay. By the end of the film Trump has become the kingpin he always wanted to be, while Cohn is an ailing Dr. Frankenstein, appalled by the monster he has created.
I wish I could say this made for great drama, but The Apprentice is forensic in its recital of Trump’s misdeeds. Writer, Gabriel Sherman, is best known as a journalist, and his screenplay is long on facts but short on characterisation. This may be due to a need to stick to known information as a way of avoiding lawsuits, or it may be a response to the slippery persona of Trump himself. The filmmakers have tried to build a composite portrait through a succession of small anecdotes – Trump’s lack of compassion for his wretched brother, Freddie; a violent rape-within-marriage of Ivana; a confrontation on the street with Cohn, whom he has double-crossed.
It adds up to a convincing picture of a cold-hearted, amoral sadist damaged by a loveless childhood, who views people solely in terms of what he can get from them. By now, we all recognise this character as a stage villain on the biggest stage in world politics. It’s an alarming thought that the repellent figure we study in The Apprentice, has received such a warm welcome for his trademark brand of grievance and hatred. Reflecting on the ‘rake’s progress’ of the young Donald Trump it’s not the past that instills a sense of creeping horror, it’s our awareness of the future. After watching this movie it’s breathtaking to reflect on the degree to which a man devoid of human qualities has been successful in remaking the world in his own image.
The Apprentice
Directed by Ali Abbasi
Written by Gabriel Sherman
Starring: Sebastian Stan, Maria Bakalova, Jeremy Strong, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie Carrick, Mark Rendall, Ben Sullivan, Joe Pingue, Jim Monaco, Ian D. Clark
Canada/Denmark/Ireland, MA 15+, 120 mins