The Apprentice Review: A Trump No One Has Seen Before

The Apprentice is a keenly observed and entertaining biopic about the making of a man who is mostly responsible for all that has gone wrong with current American politics, observes Aseem Chhabra.

Towards the middle of Ali Abbasi's film The Apprentice, Donald J Trump (played with great finesse by Sebastian Stan) is sitting on his bed with his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova).

The two have just returned from the funeral of Trump's older brother Fred, a failed pilot, and an alcoholic who had dropped out of society. The year is 1981.

Trump looks disturbed and as a caring gesture Ivana touches his arm. And suddenly, the man has a fit and breaks down crying.

Can you imagine Donald J Trump -- the 45th president of the United States, twice impeached, indicted on various criminal charges and found guilty on 34 counts by a jury in New York City for payment of hush money to a porn actor in his attempt to influence the 2016 election -- crying, even if it is in his private moment?

Not if you follow the public life and career of the man, who refused to accept defeat in the 2020 elections, has disregard for the American constitution and is once again trying to become the president of America (and he may just win).

In his new film, Iranian Danish film-maker Abbasi (Border, Holy Spider) gives us few such moments, showing a human, vulnerable side of his protagonist, one of the most controversial figures of our times.

The Apprentice was the title of the popular reality television show that ran on NBC from 2004 to 2017, and made Trump a household name across America. Each episode would end with one of the contestants being eliminated from the show with Trump uttering the infamous words, 'You're fired!'

In a recent article, the chief marketing executive of the show wrote an apology for helping create a substantially exaggerated 'false narrative' of a 'super-successful businessman' who he described as a 'monster'.

Abbasi's film starts in the early 1970s when Trump was essentially doing the dirty job for his father's real estate company, going door-to-door collecting rent from poor, retired, people and threating to evict them.

The Trump company was being sued by New York City for its alleged discriminatory practice against potential black tenants.

This is when Trump sought the assistance of Roy Cohen, a ruthless lawyer and prosecutor who first came into prominence during the 1954 McCarthy hearings which was set up to track American communists in various walks of life.

Cohen was very well connected. In one early scene in the film, his party guests include the artist Andy Warhol, New York Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner, the conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Ed Koch, mayor of New York City.

So it is no surprise that Cohen was able to get a reversal on the charges against Trump's company.

But the Donald Trump who met Cohen (a wonderful, edgy performance by Jeremy Strong with shades of his Kendell Roy in Succession) in the 1970s was a raw, insecure person from Queens, New York who hardly knew anyone in Manhattan's high society.

In a hilarious scene, Trump talks to Warhol at the party hosted by Cohen and asks what he does. Upon learning that Warhol is an artist, Trump then questions him further: 'What kind of art?'

'Anything I can sell,' Warhol says.

For some inexplicable reason, Cohen took a liking to Trump and almost adopted him like a son.

As we learn from Abbasi's film, everything that Trump picked up and learned in the cut-throat world of business, finance and politics, he owed it to Cohen.

It is clear that Cohen was not attracted to Trump. Cohen was a gay man and lived a promiscuous lifestyle where he threw wild gay parties.

At the same time, he was known to blackmail closeted gay public officials: A skill he picked up during the McCarthy hearings.

Abbasi and his writer Gabriel Sherman paint a stark portrayal of Trump from the naïve businessman to a real estate tycoon, who over-extended himself by building the Hyatt Grand Central Hotel and the vanity protect, Trump Tower in Manhattan, to casinos in Atlantic City.

But Abbasi and Sherman reserve their special creative skills to develop a captivating three-dimensional and complex Cohen -- a despicable character, whose life ended up like in a Shakespearean tragedy. He died of AIDS related complications, rejected by his mentee, Donald Trump.

A very different and a much more scathing persona of Cohen was written as one of the main characters in Tony Kushner's two-part play Angels in America (Cohen was played by Al Pacino in the HBO series based on the play), a liar and cheat who got his friend Nancy Reagan to jump hoops through Washington, DC's bureaucratic machinery to get AIDS medication that was in extreme short supply.

Abbasi also introduces us to Ivana, Trump's first wife and the mother of his three older children.

There was sweet romance between the two, but Donald soon lost interest in Ivana.

In one of the most controversial and difficult to watch scenes in the film, covered extensively in the media, Trump rapes his wife.

Ivana accused Trump of rape in her divorce documents, although later she withdrew her accusation. She wrote in her memoir that she had a good relationship with her ex-husband.

Ever since The Apprentice premiered at Cannes this summer, Trump has been threatening to sue Abbasi and his producers and get the film banned.

His threats delayed the film from getting a distribution deal in the US.

But Trump's wish may have come true, since The Apprentice did not perform well in its opening weekend in the US box office.

It's unfortunate because The Apprentice is a keenly observed and entertaining biopic about the making of a man who is mostly responsible for all that has gone wrong with current American politics.

It should be watched by audiences who are fascinated by how Trump has had so much impact on our lives.