Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: James Gray
Starring: Banks Repeta, Jaylin Webb, Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Strong, Jessica Chastain
For months before actually seeing the film, every time I read the title
of James Gray's latest, The Clash's cover of Willi Williams'
'Armagideon Time' would get stuck in my head. Lo and behold, as
Armageddon Time unspooled, that distinctive bassline
underscored the title credit. Scoring a movie named
Armageddon Time with a song titled 'Armagideon Time' is an
early indication of what a thuddingly obvious film Gray is presenting
us. As a coming-of-age drama it may be more cynical than most, but it
hits every exact plot beat you expect it to. There isn't a single
surprise here, and very few moments that feel genuine.
Gray has claimed his film is semi-autobiographical, but the bulk feels
inspired more by other works of fiction than by any real life childhood
experiences. Much of the film is a retread of Jonathan Lethem's novel
'The Fortress of Solitude', in which a young white aspiring artist
befriends a troubled black boy and learns about the injustice of America
along the way. Gray's tale shares the same setting as that book,
bankruptcy era New York, 1980 to be exact. This means we get several
scenes that feature the Reagan campaign in the background. Setting your
movie against the backdrop of a political campaign has become one of the
more annoying tropes of the past decade or so, but at least it's not as
on-the-nose here as the Obama campaign of Andrew Dominik's
Killing Them Softly.
The talented young white boy here is 12-year-old Paul (Banks Repeta), who comes from a middle class Jewish family that has benefitted
greatly from the ambiguous wealth of his grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins). The troubled black boy is his classmate Johnny (a character I can't
help was named in reference to Patti Smith's 'Horses', played by
Jaylin Webb), who is a year older, having been held back due to
his poor discipline. The opening scene introduces Paul as a talented
joker, getting in trouble for drawing the head of his teacher on the
body of a turkey. Johnny is a joker too, but possesses none of Paul's
talent and has to ultimately resort to making foul-mouthed threats to
his teacher.
For a movie that wants to pat itself on the back for interrogating
racism, it's odd how it fits its two young leads into the stereotypes of
the artistic Jew and the angry black male. Gray repeatedly uses his film
to examine his white privilege, of which he clearly feels guilty, but
Johnny is simply yet another one-note victim, the sort of character
African-American audiences must surely be sick of seeing at this point.
Maybe a better way of exorcising Gray's guilt would have been to use his
position in Hollywood to give a leg-up to a black filmmaker rather than
fashioning yet another story of a white person learning a lesson through
a black person's misfortune.
Very little about Armageddon Time feels authentic. Too
many moments feel shoehorned into the narrative to make a crude point.
When Paul is sent to a posh school after getting into trouble with
Johnny, the first adult he encounters is the school's benefactor, none
other than Fred Trump (John Diehl), father of Donald, who makes a
dismissively anti-semitic remark. Later he watches as Donald's sister
Maryanne (Jessica Chastain) gives an address to the pupils about
how they can't rely on handouts in life, even though every single one of
them has been given a handout to be there. The scene is cringey enough
as is, but having the character played by an actress whose name is
synonymous with embarrassing liberals makes it even worse.
As Paul and Johnny's relationship develops into a junior version of
Midnight Cowboy, complete with a half-baked dream of leaving New York for sunny
Florida, the narrative developments become all the more difficult to
swallow, culminating in an act of martyrdom that would have seemed
overly dramatic if it came in the climax of a 1930s Jimmy Cagney
gangster picture, let alone a supposedly grounded drama like this.
There's something off about Paul's inconsistent family dynamic too. His
father (Jeremy Strong) is portrayed as a violent disciplinarian,
but at one point Paul leaves the family dinner table to ring in an order
from the local Chinese takeaway without facing any real objection from
his parents. My parents were far from violent but if I ever pulled a
stunt like that I probably wouldn't have been able to sit down for a
week. Grandpa Aaron is one of those classic American movie and TV
patriarchs who always has the right piece of wisdom to dispense, a
Yiddish Jock Ewing, but it's just plain weird how he observes Paul
consistently behaving like an entitled little shit without having a word
with the kid. Perhaps the most inauthentic detail of all is the boys'
love of The Sugarhill Gang but disdain for disco, which would be like
being a fan of Public Enemy but hating James Brown.
While you may not believe much of what you see in
Armageddon Time, it may leave you impressed in parts. For one thing it gives us
Hopkins' best performance since his remarkable turn in the otherwise
forgettable 2011 ensemble drama 360. Hopkins oozes charm here, and it's easy to see why his daughter (Anne Hathaway) and grandson dote on him so much. Even when he's recounting
monologues that feel like they're being spoken at the wrong time, he
brings a gravitas to the simplistic words of a script that's desperate
to make sure nobody leaves the cinema without getting the point. As
Paul's adoring mother, Hathaway similarly does some fine work with a
clichéd character. When the camera lingers on her face as she listens to
her husband dole out physical punishment to Paul, it's a rare cinematic
moment in a film that's far too reliant on speechifying.
