The Apprentice: The Miseducation of Donald J. Trump

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B+

Among other appalling things about Donald Trump, he has made political correctness a more difficult path to follow. Ethical, sensitive people who oppose stigmatizing body type, age, race, mental health, intellect, addiction, criminality and appearance, can’t help trying to bully the bully.

Belying their principles, they share social media posts about the former president as a crazy, demented, bloated, bald, incontinent sexual predator with tiny hands who mangles the English language, lives on junk food, poops on a golden toilet, dresses like a clown and embodies all things gross and dangerous about capitalism and White male entitlement.

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Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice

Now, following a deluge of books and a few quickie documentaries over the past eight years – and just weeks before the U.S. election - we have The Apprentice, a feature dramatic film about the rise of Donald Trump, which, arguably, humanizes the man.

But do we want or need it? The first English-language film by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider, Border) is named after the NBC reality show which Trump hosted for 13 seasons. Though The Apprentice does not really explain Donald Trump as a psychiatric or political phenomenon, it justifies its existence as pitch dark comedy with some terrific performances and a reminder that even the Orange Menace was once someone’s darling boy.

That would not be his parents, not his mother Mary Anne (Catherine McNally) with her grim frown and hairdo that must have inspired the Trump tower. And certainly not his disdainful father Fred Trump (Martin Donovan, unrecognizable behind shoeshine black hair and a cartoon fat black moustache). Both make brief recurrent appearances in this saga.

No, the father figure was the ruthlessly cunning lawyer Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong (Succession), who took the still adolescent 27-year-old Donald (Sebastian Stan) under his care and tutelage.

The script by Roger Ailes’ biographer, Gabriel Sherman, is presented as something of a fable, equal parts Faust and Frankenstein. Cohn is a social predator who takes the young prince under his dragon wing and teaches him how to cast off empathy and morality and embrace the view that the world is divided into two kinds of people, killers and losers. In the end, the student surpasses his teacher.

Sherman’s script zooms in on Trump when he’s a nominal “vice-president” of his daddy’s firm, which means hounding tenants for their rent. He’s treated by Trump Sr. with slightly less contempt than the father reserves for his older son, Freddie (Charlie Carrick), who has opted to reject the family business to become a commercial pilot and subsequently, an alcoholic.

Donald first meets his future mentor at a members-only Le Club, where the upstart tries to impress his model date by pointing out all the important people who are there.

Cohn, who holds court with a group of men at a corner table, is a feared figure, who earned his reputation as the counsel for Senator Joe McCarthy in the ruthless mission to cleanse the government of suspected communists and homosexuals, though Cohn himself is an orgy-loving gay man. Cohn was also the prosecutor who strained the law to get death sentences for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage. Though his reputation has sunk along with McCarthy’s, he makes a living as as a fixer for unscrupulous politicians.

Mutual interests bring them together: Cohn initially mocks Trump’s social awkwardness but eyes the big blond puffball like a hungry man admiring a big, tasty sandwich. Donald, for his part, takes the putdowns because he sees a chance to impress his father, even following Cohn to the men’s room to get his attention.

Cohn has the connections to help get rid of a civil rights suit against the Trump organization for discriminating against prospective Black tenants. From there, Cohn pulls strings to give Donald his first big solo venture, engineering a city tax abatement that allowed Trump to renovate the Commodore Hotel, near Grand Central Station, turning it into the Hyatt Grand Central.

From Strong, we expect performances of borderline psychotic intensity and here he delivers:  The reptilian stare, and the whippet-lean tanned body, the heavy-lidded gaze and his fast-talking hypocritical palaver, praising truth, justice and American values while engaging in blackmail and corruption. His three cardinal rules are: 1. Attack. Attack. Attack. 2. Admit nothing. Deny everything. 3. Claim victory and never admit defeat. Together, the formula for Trump’s “Stop The Steal” agenda for his 2020 election loss.

As good as Strong is, it’s Sebastian Stan’s character that does the big transformation here. In his first fumbling moments, we even feel some sympathy for the big fluffy-haired lug, who is always trying too hard and embarrassing himself.

But then, the pursed lips which initially suggest a baby looking to nurse, become increasingly fixed into a sullen pout. The awkward flapping hands become more rigid, even Trump’s cotton-candy blond hair grows more stiffly sprayed.

 As he hardens, he begins to ignore his mentor’s advice, first in a misguided Atlantic City casino deal, and in his pursuit of a Czech model, Ivana Zelnickova (Maria Bakalova), who has no illusions about Trump’s shortcomings. He is shameless, but has a head for financial opportunity.

As Donald becomes more famous in New York circles (cue cameos from George Steinbrenner, Andy Warhol, Roger Stone and Anthony “Fat Tony” Solerno) and serially unfaithful, the marriage deteriorates. This leads to a scene of Trump brutally raping her (an event which Ivanka accused him of during her divorce deposition, but later recanted.) The cruelty expands: He treats his downward spiraling alcoholic brother like a stranger, and eventually rejects Cohn, when his mentor develops AIDS, which led to his death in 1986 at the age of 59.

By the end, Trump has become both his own Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, subjecting himself to scalp reduction surgery and stomach stapling to control his increasing waistline, while struggling with erectile dysfunction as a side effect of gobbling diet pills. Arguably, this is overkill, but also a corrective to the absurd Superman myth Trump and his supporters attempt to perpetuate.

Given its subject, The Apprentice is unavoidably kitschy, an aesthetic reflected in the jangled angles and yellow titles that evoke ‘70s TV, to the puffy wigs, and gold-encrusted décor.

This is amusing for a while but as the narrative momentum flags in the second half and Donald swells and solidifies into Trump, it seems increasingly hard to buy that the Trump phenomenon can be traced to a daddy complex and a lawyer who died almost forty years ago. Thanks to the exceptional performances, though, The Apprentice is at least entertaining, which beats doom-scrolling and screaming into your pillow for the next month.

The Apprentice. Directed by Ali Abbasi. Written by Gabriel Sherman. Starring: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie McNally.  The Apprentice opens in theatres across Canada on Oct. 11.