The Apprentice (2024)
A review with spoilers, I guess.
“I learned it from watching you, Dad(dy)!”
The Apprentice bills itself as “the film Donald Trump doesn’t want you to see.” While true, that isn’t because The Apprentice is a hard-hitting cinematic exposé.
One gets the sense that The Apprentice fancies itself the Citizen Kane (1941) of 2024, an artistic endeavor completed despite the efforts of powerful men to quash the film’s production. However, Donald Trump is no William Randolf Hearst, the media mogul whose life story was sublimated into the text of Citizen Kane.
It isn’t difficult to bait Trump. He is as whiny as he is litigious, and any perceived slight is poised to ignite a fit of bitching and moaning, very little of which amounts to anything but hot air.
The Apprentice is a film about a young, meek Trump (Sebastian Stan), uncomfortable in his own skin and lacking his characteristic bluster. Under the tutelage of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), infamous fixer and unscrupulous lawyer, Trump learns how to cultivate a facade of hyper-masculine confidence.
The Apprentice is a thematically focused film whose narrative scope is rather myopic. It focuses on New York City politics, fighting a discrimination lawsuit against Trump’s family business in the 1970s and obtaining tax abatements for Trump’s construction projects in the 1980s.
As far as films about tax abatements go, The Apprentice is a barnburner. As a portrait of a corrupt President, it’s far less compelling. By dint of its temporal and thematic focus, Ali Abbasi’s film lacks the urgency to speak to the present political moment. Frankly, it barely tries, focusing exclusively on Trump’s past rather than the present or future. It’s an origin story that posits that monsters like Donald Trump aren’t born; they’re made.
Embodying Evil
Sebastian Stan does a fine job as Trump, initially embodying an insecure, almost unrecognizable young Trump. He evolves into the blathering buffoon we’ve all come to know and loathe, but the transformation isn’t gradual and so registers as inauthentic.
Once Stan switches into the idiosyncratic clown perched atop Trump Tower, he nails all of the mannerisms, but Trump impressions are a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, there’s little novelty in a superficial exploration of the persona that has become ubiquitous, saturating every corner of American culture for nearly a decade.
Instead, Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, sustains the film. In a display of irony stranger than fiction, Cohn, an antisemitic Jew and openly homophobic closeted homosexual, models the facade of masculine confidence despite being even more uncomfortable in his skin than the fledgling Trump.
Both men develop and cower behind their “impenetrable facades” without ever acknowledging or addressing their underlying insecurities. It’s no wonder Trump remains such an insecure little bitch whose buttons remain so easy to push.
The relationship between Trump and Cohn is as perverse as it is ironic. Trump seeks paternal and fraternal bonds that his family cannot provide. Cohn cultivates a relationship that functions as a proxy for familial approval, with an irrefutable current of homoerotic desire.
From the moment they meet in an exclusive nightclub, Cohn wants to fuck Trump. He spends the film grooming Trump, and, in the end, Trump does indeed fuck Cohn. Is it wrong to say that Cohn gets what he deserves? Perhaps, but Cohn’s comeuppance is undeniably poetic.
Jeremy Strong’s performance as Cohn is compelling, even if it fails to conjure Cohn’s trademark malevolence. Strong moves through the film with vigor, showcasing the humor Cohn sometimes deftly wielded. Strong’s performance is physically committed, craning his head forward with an ever-bobbing head.
Having seen plenty of archival footage of Roy Cohn, I don’t know why Strong portrayed Cohn like a bobblehead. Perhaps it speaks to the caricature of Cohn that Strong was aiming for. I can’t say for sure, but it's only a mild distraction amid a commendable performance.
The Real Victim of The Apprentice
Despite solid performances from its stars, Maria Bakalova's performance as Ivana shines brightest. She does the most with her limited screen time, portraying Trump’s first wife as charming and savvy, tragically coaxed into Trump’s orbit.
It was The Apprentice’s depiction of Ivana and Donald Trump’s marriage that drew the former president’s ire. While I do not doubt the overall veracity of The Apprentice’s depiction of their relationship, the manner by which The Apprentice gained infamy is worthy of criticism.
The film garnered buzz surrounding a scene in which Trump rapes Ivana, an accusation she levied under oath during their divorce proceedings in 1990. She later recanted her accusation in 2015, when Trump was running for President.
I am inclined to believe Ivana’s initial accusations. After all, Trump has been accused by over twenty women of sexual misconduct, and a New York Jury found Trump civilly “liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996,” per The Associated Press.
The rape scene is an unflinching display of Trump's misogyny. Horrific violence is inflicted upon a woman with the gall to consider herself an equal within their marriage.
While Trump’s penchant for sexual violence and dehumanizing behavior towards women cannot be overlooked, the rape scene doesn’t feel germane to the narrative and thematic focus of The Apprentice, and so its inclusion feels more salacious and exploitative than righteous.
In a final insult to her agency, Ivana’s body is interred at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Roy Cohn: Bully. Coward. Victim.
“What can I say? That I haven't been discreet. I never claimed to be discreet. I claim to be upfront and totally candid, and I claim not to be a hypocrite. What I do, I do on the basis of moral judgments as I make them, as only I must make them, according to my own conscience.”
-Roy Cohn, recorded for a 1980 interview in Playboy Magazine
“This is a nation of men, not laws. There is no right or wrong. No morality. Truth is a construct. You create your own reality. Nothing matters but winning.”
-Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice
In a documentary directed by the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg1, Ivy Meeropol renders an uncompromising portrait of Roy Cohn, a complicated man.
“It became clear to me right away that my stereotyping of Roy was inadequate. To call him evil - it's true, but it doesn't explain a hundred other things about Roy Cohn. He was bright. He was contentious, but I think what appealed to me most about Roy is that he was a lawless madman.”
-Journalist Peter Manso, on his 1980 interview with Roy Cohn for Playboy Magazine
Unhindered by a focus on the future president, Bully. Coward. Victim. examines Cohn’s life, his deeds, and misdeeds. Through the testimony of family, friends, foes, and Cohn himself, the film exposes the infamous fixer as a criminal and all-around terrible person.
David Lloyd Marcus and Alice Marcus reflect on their cousin, Roy Cohn, in an interview with director Ivy Meeropol:
David: “I think a lot of people have family members they don't want to talk about. People have family members who have some evil, but he was a personification of evil.”
Alice: “Absolutely.”
David: “Every family has its Roy Cohn.”
Alice: “Oh, I hope not. The world would be a terrible place if that happened.”
“I do have a crazy list of clients. The usual reaction isn’t ‘Roy Cohn represents the mob.” It's Roy Cohn and Studio 54; Roy Cohn and anti-Communism; Roy Cohn and the archdiocese; Roy Cohn, the friend and lawyer for Donald Trump; Roy Cohn, good friend of George Steinbrenner who owns the New York Yankees; Roy Cohn, the friend of Congressman, senators, judges.’”
-Roy Cohn, recorded for a 1980 interview in Playboy Magazine
Cohn is a shadowy figure whose unscrupulousness lives on in the former president, who continues to emulate his former mentor — quite poorly, I might add.
Where Cohn was careful with his words, Trump blathers. While Cohn carefully cultivated loyalty via longstanding relationships, Trump demands it outright. Both have faced indictments, but only Trump has been convicted.
Roy Cohn lived his life as a closeted homosexual, masquerading in heterosexual spaces. Trump can’t recognize a gay person standing in front of him, even as they hold a sign that reads “Gays for Trump.”
Despite exceeding my (admittedly low) expectations, The Apprentice offers very little new information about Trump’s checkered past and fewer insights into the man himself. It is an origin story that isn’t poised to change a single opinion about its subject.
Bully. Coward. Victim., a more straightforward documentary, is a superior portrait of Cohn’s shrewd menace rooted in a life of deep self-loathing.
As for Trump, I think Vic Beger’s phantasmagoric documentary Donald Trump is President and You’re Not is a portrait of Trump whose cinematic form is unhinged as its subject.
In that regard, it befits the current political moment far more than The Apprentice dares to.
Until next week, pray for America, my fellow film freaks.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a New York couple accused of spying for the Soviet Union in 1951, prosecuted by a young Roy Cohn, and subsequently sent to the electric chair in 1953.