The Apprentice

Grade: B

The Apprentice falls into the same category as Conclave and Emilia Pérez. I liked the movies ok. Loved the acting. Any and every actor from those are nominatable, and they are the real reason to see it. In The Apprentice’s case, we have Oscar Best Actor nominee Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, and – my favorite performance here – Best Supporting Actor nominee Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. Strong is deadpan here, with a mostly expressionless face. Head down, eyes up – straight out of Stanley Kubrick territory. I was afraid it was going to be one of those one-note sarcastic performances like Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies – not one of my favorite Oscar wins. But just keep watching; Strong gets to have levels in The Apprentice.

Director Ali Abbasi successfully gives The Apprentice an old-timey, slightly grainy visual feel. It looks like it could have been made in the 70s or early 80s, when it’s set. Sebastian Stan brings us a Donald Trump that isn’t like a typical biopic performance. He’s got the hair, and occasionally, the trademark mannerisms come out, like the pursed lips and the invisible accordion playing – but for the most part, it could be a character in a fictional piece. 

The movie chronicles his journey to the creation of Trump Tower, with Roy Cohn and Trump’s courtship and eventual marriage to Ivana being the centerpieces. I have admired Maria Bakalova ever since her Oscar-nominated performance as Borat’s daughter in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. She was also so great in the so great Bodies Bodies Bodies. Her work as Ivana is at least as strong as her two co-stars who have been the ones enjoying awards recognition this season. In a scene where she calls her husband fat, orange, and bald, believe it or not, “bald” is what sets him off and gets him angry. She and Strong have a great moment late in the film. When Donald is giving one of his self-congratulatory speeches at a dinner, Ivana and Cohn exchange a look that says a thousand words. They seem to be recognizing that they are two people who have been chewed up and spit out by this man, and they are in this together.

I enjoyed a sneaky narrative trick where there is a funeral, that I assumed was obviously for one particular character, only to find out I was wrong when I saw this person again. My favorite of many moments where Trump’s self-absorption is played up happens in a scene where Ivana enters, extremely pregnant, and he’s all like “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” There’s a chilling sequence that cuts back-and-forth to Trump having work done by a surgeon while a boys’ choir is singing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” elsewhere. The score uses sinister minor chords that fit the melody of the song, but give it a very dark sound.

It ends with him pitching a book idea that, of course, would become The Art of the Deal. He repeats three pieces of advice that he learned from Cohn (and we heard earlier), passing them off as something he came up with himself. Apropos. The camera is often situated low, looking up at him, so even the audience feels talked down to. The Apprentice was a funny progression for me. I really wasn’t sold on it in the first half. I was ready to write it off – eager to just get through it. It started to pick up steam in the second act, and by the end, I found several excellent things, a few of which I wrote about above. Most movies, if they are uneven, start off great and lose momentum later. The Apprentice is a dud at the beginning, then makes a huge improvement. A tremendous, tremendous improvement. An improvement like you wouldn’t believe.

Grade: B