The Apprentice Review

The American election year has for months now been marked by fear, or by the never-dormant hope, of a grand return Donald Trump up to the White House. A wonderful opportunity to ride his controversial popularity in a biographical film, The Apprentice, which focuses on the years of his rise in the world of real estate, at a very young age, to the economic aristocracy of New York. We are between the 70s and 80s, and in this journey between power and ambition, in a shabby and corrupt context like that of Manhattan in those years, the figure of the son of a successful real estate developer emerges. A generation leap in which Donald wants to relaunch his father’s legacy by directing it towards one clearly visible grandiloquence, one might say phallic and in line with his macho vision of the world, the private and the public one. For him, dad Fred’s Trump Village is a small thing, he aspires to soar into the sky a few steps from Central Park, right next to the iconic Tiffany store, with the Trump Tower. The first is the original, which “I could have made taller than the Twin Towers”, as the protagonist of this biopic says, bizarrely directed by the Iranian Danish Ali Abbasiawarded at Cannes for a decidedly distant (and more successful) film like Holy Spider.

A sort of instant movie, in the works for years, but started when the former president’s shares rose again, it is written by the journalist Gabriel Sherman and played by Sebastian Stan. Alongside him, in a crucial role, the always convincing Jeremy Strong Of Succession. It is indeed the relationship of a young Trump with the lawyer Roy Cohan represents the heart of this The Apprenticewhich refers to the apprentice in a literal way, but also referring to the television program then hosted, for years and successfully, by the future president of the United States. It is Cohn who acts as a mentor in the exclusive and semi-hidden salons of power, those in which corruption and political decisions interacted without too many problems, in which the destinies of the newcomers were decided by his ability to quickly understand the rules of the game. Roy Cohn was in his house in those rooms, already in the service of Senator McCarthy and prosecutor, up to the role of facilitator of this novice, a New Yorker but from the less noble neighborhoods, both in terms of birth, in Queens, and in terms of development of the company’s father.

A controversial figure, that of Roy CohnThat gives some bursts of energy to this story which retraces without particular twists, narrative or staging, a parable already abundantly known and analyzed, even and above all in its darkest areas, during his entry into politics. It’s not surprising to see him exploit the lawyer for contacts, for later impose his whims and a rambling true charisma, narcissistically always putting himself in the front row, pursuing dreams of glory and an obsession with women and in particular for the breast. In particular by his first wife, Ivana, whose relationship is at the center of The Apprentice, complete with ruthless and rapid disinterest towards other blonde, younger and plumper prey.

A film that doesn’t move much, it falls within the ordinary craftsmanship of a parable of the formation of an empire built through betrayals and fratricidal stabs, of a person capable of becoming a mask, even with surgical interventions to sculpt a figure alternately recognized as iconic or pathetic. An anti-Camelot from a clan at odds with the Kennedys, sent back to the sender by the protagonist of the film himself. There remains one bigino on the education of the entrepreneur’s homicidal instinct, with previews of future slogans, Make America Great Again, and a political career rejected with disdain in those years. With very clear rules of conduct, always in mind and then followed consistently: the truth only exists if it is yours, and never admit a defeat, always announce it as a victory.