Writers: Gabriel Sherman
Director: Ali Abbasi
If you want to be a winner, then deny, deny, deny. This is the golden rule according to lawyer Roy Cohen, a mantra that Donald Trump adopts in Gabriel Sherman’s making of the man story, The Apprentice, previewed at the BFI London Film Festival 2024 and directed by Ali Abbasi. A pupil exceeding the master story, Sherman and Abbasi’s film, shot in grainy documentary style, follows the Trump-Cohen relationship in the late 1970s until just after Cohen’s death in the mid-1980s, as the younger man built his skyscraper empire. Referencing many of the phrases, attitudes and later knowledge of Trump, this limited period biopic will have both sides claiming victory in this election year.
Young Donald Trump feels constrained by his father and wants to expand their construction business. Meeting famously tricky lawyer Roy Cohen leads to an unassailable partnership, convincing (and bribing) officials to waive taxes and cut red tape to get projects built. But as Trump becomes more successful, he starts to forget his partner when Cohen’s health diminishes and Trump denies the contact that made him powerful.
Taking its title from the television show that amplified Trump’s business fame, The Apprentice is a Frankenstein’s monster story, focusing on the relationship between two men and the rules of business and politics that Trump learns from his leader. There is little empathy here, both men ruthlessly employing any means necessary – bribery, corruption and the intrigue of powerful allies – which Sherman paints against a backdrop of declining New York where the gap between rich and poor was widening. The social consequences of ordinary people suffering when men like Trump exploit them is well conceived, particularly later in the film where his golden promises of jobs and prosperity materialise in wage defaults and leveraged debt.
The possibility of lionising Trump in the early part of the film takes hold with an American Hustle slickness depicting the era as fun parties, glamorous fashion and entertaining excess, all enhanced by the disco soundtrack that makes it feel like one long party. Trump at the beginning is a love to hate villain. But that changes in the second half of the film as Sherman bursts the bubble, all things that won’t surprise the audience, but the presentation notably shifts with a scene of domestic rape and the treatment of Cohen who struggles to hide his AIDS diagnosis (though continues to deny it of course) – a story that Tony Kushner picked up in play Angels in America. The cruelty and self-delusion here are more recognisable, the future President is clearly emerging.
Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong deliver excellent performances in the lead roles, the shifting sands of their relationship managed skillfully across the film. Stan becomes more than an impression of Trump, rooting his venality in daddy issues and a self-belief encouraged by 80s excess, while Strong’s Cohen seems full of regrets, at least in his decision to support Trump. When the visible disgust from Stan’s Trump responds to Cohen’s illness, it ripples through the film. Sherman includes this as a reminder that however evil and dark the deeds, mortality is just waiting around the corner.
You will go wanting to dislike this film and filled with expectations about the protagonist. That Sherman and Abbasi play into that and present something that offers a new perspective is well controlled. Love him or loath him, this won’t change your opinion about who Trump is, but whatever this film has to say, no one will be happier that he is the star than Trump himself. Anything else it might have to say about his life he’ll claim is fake news.
The Apprentice is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
