The Apprenticewhose title evokes the reality show hosted by Donald Trump from 2004 to 2015, is the classic, but unflattering, portrait of a young real estate wolf who became a power-hungry sociopath, under the aegis of a devious mentor.
Ali Abbasi, Danish filmmaker of the disturbing Holy Spideris interested in what shaped the personality of Donald Trump in the 1970s and 1980s. How this young man lacking confidence transformed into a megalomaniac; and to the reasons which explain why the border between truth and lies has become for him a vague and malleable object according to his interests.
At the heart of the intrigue, there is a Faustian pact between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn, formidable lawyer and political matchmaker, manipulator, liar and reactionary blackmailer, several times accused of being involved in shady deals, but never convicted.
It was from Roy Cohn that Trump borrowed the three golden rules that dictate the way he conducts his life and business according to The Apprentice : attack is the best defense, you must admit nothing, deny everything, and above all, you must never concede victory.
In the role of young Trump, Sebastian Stan (the Winter Soldier of the Marvel films and series) assimilated the pout, speech and gestures typical of the former President of the United States. He borders on caricature, but I ended up believing in the character beyond the pastiche.
Jeremy Strong is excellent in the role of Roy Cohn, the Jewish and anti-Semitic prosecutor who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair in the 1950s and who advised Senator McCarthy in his hunt for communists. Cohn was also a homophobe who denied his homosexuality, and who died of AIDS in 1986.
It is the influence of the Pygmalion on his foal that tells The Apprenticeand it is obviously impossible not to see in Cohn’s cynical philosophy the germ of what threatens American democracy today. The film seems to defend a thesis: if Donald Trump had not met Roy Cohn, perhaps he would not have become this despicable being, without the slightest scruple or the slightest empathy, ready to sell his mother for his own advancement.
The creation of Trump
Ali Abbasi’s film begins with the famous images of Richard Nixon declaring that he is not a crook (” I am not a crook). The script by Gabriel Sherman, who knew Donald Trump in the 2000s when he was a journalist on the economic pages of New York Observeron the other hand, seems almost sympathetic to Trump at the beginning of the film.
Sherman presents the young Donald Trump as a man who has not yet renounced the elementary principles of justice and does not make him a caricature of a talentless daddy’s boy. Yes, his father was rich and he took advantage of it, but he also had a flair for business.
PHOTO PIEF WEYMAN, BRIARCLIFF ENTERTAINMENT, PROVIDED BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Maria Bakalova and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice
Before finding a father figure in Cohn, the young Donald at the beginning of the film above all wants to make his intransigent father proud, who raised him the hard way, while extricating himself from his shadow. In this way, he resembles the character of Kendall played by Jeremy Strong in the series. Succession…
Like his racist father, Donald Trump divides in The Apprentice the world into two categories: on one side there are the “killers”, and on the other the losers.
“You have to be able to do everything, against everyone, to win,” explains Roy Cohn, who thanks to his contacts will make him go from ambitious shark to real estate mogul during the Reagan years.
Over time, the less Trump listens to Cohn’s advice – which notably instructs him not to invest in Atlantic City – the more Gabriel Sherman’s screenplay reveals the uncontrollable nature of the monster that the mentor helped create. Until a scene of disturbing violence where, after insisting that his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) obtain a breast augmentation, Donald Trump repudiates and rapes her. Which Ivana Trump actually claimed at the time of their divorce, but which she later denied.
The Apprentice suggests that the former American president maintained mistresses (including Marla Maples), but also links with the mafia through Roy Cohn. Trump was also addicted to weight gain medications and suffered from erectile dysfunction, underwent liposuction and surgeries to hide his baldness.
No wonder those around him take a dim view of the theatrical release of this film selected in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, less than a month before the presidential election.
Check the movie schedule
Biographical drama
The Apprentice
Ali Abbasi
With Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova
2 hours