(USA, 124 min.)
Dir. Jay Roach, Writ. John McNamara
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Helen Mirren, Diane Lane, Elle
Fanning, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, David James Elliott, Dean O'Gorman,
Alan Tudyk, Louis C.K
 |
| Helen Mirren stars as Hedda Hopper and Bryan Cranston stars as Dalton Trumbo in Jay Roach’s Trumbo, an Entertainment One release. Photo: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle |
“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist
Party?” are chilling words that define a dark and pivotal chapter of Hollywood
history. The years of the Hollywood Blacklist in which industry figures like
screenwriter Dalton Trumbo were ostracized and persecuted for their politics, are
important years for Hollywood to remember, yet the story of the Hollywood Ten
doesn’t get much screen time from Tinsletown. Aside from George Clooney’s
excellent Good Night, and Good Luck,
which uses the 1953 CBS news coverage of the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) to interrogate media responsibility in Bush-era America, few
contemporary films ask that familiar question. It appears again in Trumbo, perhaps the fullest
dramatization of the era of the Hollywood Blacklist, but the film unfortunately
feels like a missed opportunity to turn the question of McCarthyism right on
its head.
Trumbo gives a dark story light treatment in an admirably disappointing movie about the movies. The film is in the vein of 2012’s Hitchcock with its conflictingly tempered rendering of Trumbo’s fall and return from the shadows. Unfortunately, for Trumbo, the film features a scene in which Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) jokes about directing Trumbo’s script inconsistently to balance the quality of the writing, for Trumbo feels similarly inconsistent as director Jay Roach (Game Change) flip-flips between silliness and satire. Hollywood writes a good story, but, oddly enough, it sometimes struggles in telling its own story.
Bryan Cranston stars as the famed screenwriter and member of
the Communist Party, and his performance as the titular writer is consistently
solid despite the inconsistencies in the film itself. Cranston’s hunched and
raspy performance carries a writer’s passion and eccentricities. Mr. Trumbo
certainly affords a meaty role as he waves his cigarette holder and speaks in
grandiose writerly proclamations that allow an actor to accent word with
majestic gestures and conviction. Both Mr. Trumbo and Mr. Cranston have an
inherent flare for storytelling, and Cranston’s performance sparks the passion
of the creative process with the right fire and intelligence. Cranston’s Trumbo
fights for something greater than himself as he clacks away on the keyboard and
wrinkles like a prune in the bathtub, which doubles as his office. As with
Walter White and Heisenberg in Breaking
Bad, Cranston relishes the opportunity to play a man who lives a double
life and finds success with alter egos.
While Mr. White makes drugs and kills people, Mr. Trumbo
writes movies and entertains; however, they both pursue a common ideal that
says America is a great country with a flawed system that one must simply
subvert to play fair. Trumbo, following his interrogation before HUAC,
subsequent blacklisting from the Hollywood studios, and year in prison for
contempt of congress, basically starts breaking bad Hollywood style by writing
screenplays on the sly with a nom de
plume. The trick works wonders—some of his films are smashes without his
name in the credits and they accumulate box office mojo with two of them, Roman Holiday and The Brave One, earning Oscars for the writers fronting Trumbo.
Trumbo’s success proves that a man’s politics and his work can be separate
entities and, subsequently, his coup shows the redundancy of the hearings, the
Blacklist, and the anti-Communist fears running throughout America if Americans
can love Roman Holiday without being
corrupted by leftist leanings.
Trumbo, however,
tells this dark story a little too lightly as it offers chuckles and
zingers—the latter of which are to be expected given the writerly subject. The
film never treads into full-on comedy, though, and instead the humour becomes a
protective shield against pushing the envelope too far. Awkward pacing makes
the drama fizzle, for Trumbo encounters few obstacles that aren’t easily
overcome in the film’s lengthy running time. Aside from some moments in which a
villainous Hedda Hopper (a delicious Helen Mirren, who sports a riotous
assemblage of over-the-top hats on the gossip columnist’s head) pokes her nose
into Communist rumblings, the film finds little conflict in this difficult
tale. There is merit in revisiting the years of the Hollywood Blacklist, but
why Trumbo decides to tell this story
right now isn’t clear. (Unlike, say, Good
Night, and Good Luck coming on the heels of Rathergate to remind CBS of the
ideals its newsroom it once cherished.)
Cranston nevertheless gives a memorable performance that
shows the range and spark of ability to blend dark humour and gravelly
conviction. The actor is especially fun in his few scenes with Mirren that
assume a conspiratorial rivalry as both actors indelibly embody the idealism
that their respective characters represent. Many other key supporting players
add ample colour bringing to life familiar faces from classic Hollywood, like
Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson, David James Elliot as John Wayne, and
Dean O’Gorman as an uncannily spot-on Kirk Douglas, while John Goodman brings
some Argo spirit as a producer of
Hollywood schlock. This movie about the movies tips its hat to a hero who
helped define an era for better while his peers could have defined it for the
worse. It’s an important story and one that Hollywood should own more forcefully.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Trumbo is now playing in limited release. It screens in Ottawa at The ByTowne and Landmark Kanata.
