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Given the corrosive reputations of Donald J. Trump and his onetime mentor Roy Cohn, who died from AIDS in the mid ’80s, you might expect some kind of wicked hit job from Ali Abassi‘s The Apprentice.
And you’d be…well, partly wrong.
The film leans heavily on the factual record, and so Trump and Cohn don’t exactly come off as honorable or admirable at the end of the day, but they aren’t portrayed as total scumbags either.
Which is a bit surprising. It’s even affecting.
During the first half of The Apprentice Sebastian Stan‘s Trump comes off, believe it or not, like a relatively sympathetic ’70s lad from Queens — a bit naive and unsteady, hungry for fame and fortune, a hard-charging comer trying to learn the ropes and make something of himself as best he can.
Trumpistan gradually succumbs to a kind of cynical, brusque egotism before morphing into out-and-out venality, but in the early stages Stan allows you to actually feel a little something for the guy.
Ditto Jeremy Strong‘s Cohn, who is unmistakably avaricious and reptilian during The Apprentice‘s first half, but gradually registers as half-human when Part Two kicks in.
With Trump having essentially decided to throw personal loyalty to the winds after learning that Cohn is sick with AIDS, the frail, soft-spoken Cohn emerges as a more or less tragic figure — you actually feel a shred of sympathy.
Which is quite a feat considering who and what Cohn actually was.
And here’s another rooting factor, although it may sound a bit hard-edged:
Above and beyond the obvious quality of their Oscar-nominated performances, Stan (now preparing to shoot Fjord for Romanian helmer Cristian Mingiu) and Strong are the only Oscar nominees associated with a thumbs-down message about the real Donald Trump. Today’s version, I mean.
Until recently Emilia Perez star and Best Actress Oscar nominee Karla Sofia Gascon stood to benefit the most from anti-orange sentiment. Several weeks ago THR‘s Scott Feinberg speculated that a vote for the transitioned Gascon could be interpreted as an extended middle finger aimed at you-know-who.
But right now the general consensus is that Gascon’s campaign has self-destructed with those years-old racist tweets, and so at the risk of sounding a bit mercenary, it can be argued that Stan and Strong are now the only viable symbols of anti-Trump industry fervor.
Do I believe that acting Oscars should be bestowed with this kind of political motive? No, I don’t — my feelings about Oscars are too romantic and deep-rooted to allow for this kind of thinking or symbology. But many AMPAS members, I gather, are itching to send a message to MAGA nation. Who am I to say they’re wrong?