When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, there was a prediction in some corners that the anger and frustration resulting from his presidency would translate into an increase in great art. After all, aren’t meaningful artists often born out of frightening times? Those that force us to look back and assess how we could’ve possibly come to a place like this?
Whether or not the last six years have been good, “better” or neither for art is entirely up to debate, but it is certainly plausible this era led some filmmakers down the path of self-reflection. From Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun to Spielberg’s upcoming The Fabelmans and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Bardo, the last couple years especially have seen a significant uptick in directors turning the lens on themselves, exploring their childhoods either in an act of nostalgia or to investigate how they came to be where they are today. But no other filmmaker has used a memoir film to interact as directly and specifically with Donald Trump’s America as James Gray does with Armageddon Time.
You can surmise a lot about the film from that title. Armageddon Time is a story of modest scale but somewhat apocalyptic and prickly implications. Gray isn’t exploring his childhood as a way to see how he grew up to be the person he is today, but rather how America did.
The year is 1980, New York City. Ronald Reagan is on the cusp of being elected president, and the pressure is high for the next generation to produce workers who will go into lucrative businesses like finance and industry. Culture is changing, but it’s not clear in what direction. Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) is more or less naïve to this, a keen but rebellious sixth-grader attending public school in the heart of the city. Paul befriends Johnny (Jaylin Webb), a Black classmate who similarly catches ire from their obnoxious, autocratic teacher, and together, they dream of conquering the world.
Paul dreams of becoming a famous artist, while Johnny hopes to join NASA. The Graff family, Jewish and middle class, are a collection of figures that both enlighten and restrict him. There’s his hardworking mother and father, Irving and Esther (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway, respectively), who see his resistance to authority as symptomatic of a lack of discipline. His grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins), meanwhile, quietly fights to foster his grandson’s creativity and to stand up for what’s right. It’s through these various relationships that Paul’s perspective on the world begins to shift, widen, and ultimately darken in the understanding that he and his family’s efforts to “get ahead” in society might inevitably mean leaving others behind. His family’s generational trauma both illuminates them to the inequalities of the world, but also pushes them consciously and unconsciously towards a desire to conform to it.
Emphasized by Gray’s unromantic style, Armageddon Time is a period piece fully free of nostalgia. Aside from a few brief mentions of disco (and “disco sucks”), there are no fashionable needle drops or Stranger Things-esque mall montages. Instead, much of the action takes place in cluttered or austere classrooms, a middle-class home, or on dirty New York City streets. The film’s color palette is largely grey, only becoming warmer in familiar places like Paul’s home. Even his momentary flights of childlike fancy, including an imagined unveiling of one of his superhero paintings at the Guggenheim, are presented in fairly stark detail. We see the world through Paul’s eyes, open but increasingly limited.
It’s clear what Gray is going for thematically, which aided by cinematographer Darius Khondji’s naturalistic camerawork allows us to linger on tangible details that emphasize these points: the stark contrast, for instance, between the languishing public and Trump family-funded private school that Paul is eventually maneuvered into. They’re both oppressive, but on opposite ends of the spectrum. In one of the film’s eeriest sequences, Maryanne Trump (in a brief appearance from Jessica Chastain) gives a speech on Paul’s first day at his new school. Before she walks on stage, a brief mention is made of school elections, prompting the students to enthusiastically shout “Reagan! Reagan!” They sound like drones – no 12-year-old would be that passionate about Ronald Reagan. But we act how we’re taught to.
Despite Armageddon Time’s litany of fascinating and thorny ideas, Gray’s emphasis on the thematic meaning of these memories often robs them of emotional potency. It’s hard to get fully involved in a film that’s so self-consciously detached from its own narrative, intent to meaningfully interrogate but lacking a lived-in quality that would help to fully invigorate the story.
It’s no coincidence that the best scenes are the ones shared between Paul and his grandfather. Hopkins brings a warmth and generosity to his performance as Aaron, and it’s clear that he’s a fondly remembered character. An early monologue he gives about his mother leaving Europe because of violent antisemitism and a later scene shared between the two on a park bench are emotional highlights. Hathaway is also excellent as Paul’s mother, a complex character torn between motivations concerning her son. Strong’s performance is arguably a bit affected, but this mostly helps aid the portrayal of a frustrated character whose spent his entire life trying to please others. It’s Webb’s Johnny who unfortunately ends up little more than a pawn in the narrative, since Gray’s few attempts to show his interiority are brief and broadly sketched.
Ultimately, it’s hard to argue with Armageddon Time’s intent, and many may find the film refreshing because of its admirably self-implicating perspective, but the approach is also self-limiting. By the end, Paul’s perspective on the world has clearly changed, but we were already there the whole time.
Photo courtesy of Focus Features
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