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Bryan Cranston is the put-upon idealist Trumbo under the scornful eye of Helen Mirren |
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Bryan Cranston (Dalton Trumbo), Diane Lane (Cleo
Trumbo), Helen Mirren (Hedda Hopper), Louis CK (Arlen Hird), Elle Fanning
(Nikola Trumbo), John Goodman (Frank King), Michael Stuhlbarg (Edward G
Robinson), Alan Tudyk (Ian McLellan Hunter), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Virgil
Brooks), Dean O’Gorman (Kirk Douglas), Stephen Root (Hymie King), Roger Bart
(Buddy Ross), David James Elliott (John Wayne), Christian Berkel (Otto
Preminger)

Trumbo is a very
earnest, straightforward and rather bland re-tread of a key moment in
Hollywood. It’s made with very little imagination, and remixes the world of
1940s politics into something that bears more resemblance to the political
situation now than it does to the time. That’s not to defend the House
Committee on Un American Activities (HUAC), the Congress Committee that led the
campaign against communist subversion in Hollywood. Their persecution of
communists flew in the face of American ideals of free speech, and their ruin
of the lives of innumerable actors, writers and directors not found to be
ideological pure is appalling.
But this is a film that simplifies its politics into a world
of good and bad. It also works hard to try and whitewash Hollywood. Watch this
film and you would believe it was Congress that had worked overtime in order to
ban certain Hollywood creatives from working. Not so: the black list was put
forward by the movie studios themselves and endorsed by the various guilds.
Famous actors and directors, such as Humphrey Bogart and John Huston, furiously
dropped their support for the Hollywood Ten after feeling they had been
deceived by the Ten about their Communist associations. The film mentions none
of this of course, running with a Hollywood-vs-Congress story line and
crowbarring in people like McCarthy and Nixon who had very little to do with
HUAC.
The main Hollywood figures campaigning against the Black
List are either faceless Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American
Ideals types, or lip-smacking, practically mustachio-twirling gossip columnist
Hedda Hopper (played with ludicrous OTT camp wickedness by Helen Mirren). John
Wayne is the only recognisable Hollywood “legend” shown on the side of these
guys – and, while he does get mocked for his non-war-record early on by Trumbo,
he is quickly shown to be a moderate pushing for forgiveness for those who
repent (and is noticeably absent from the villainy of the organisation later in
the film) – Hollywood doesn’t want to be too harsh on one of its own.
Roach’s political simplicity also affects the actors who
found themselves in an impossible position. As Michael Stuhlbarg’s Edward G
Robinson points out, writers can work under a pseudonym, actors can’t. I was
reminded of when Elia Kazan won an honorary Oscar and several famous Hollywood
actors refused to applaud him, as Kazan had “named names” (or rather confirmed
names HUAC already knew) when pulled before the committee. Robinson here is
rammed into the same position, denounced as a snitch and a traitor for
confirming the names of the Hollywood Ten when many of them are already in
prison. As at the Oscars, I’m not sure it’s our place to judge. It’s cosy to
assume “I would have told them no” but who can say if we would have or not? And
can we really judge those who decided they didn’t want to go to the wall for a
communist cause they didn’t believe in (as Kazan and Robinson didn’t, being
more left-wing sympathisers than Stalinists like Trumbo)?
It’s another part of the film’s simplicity that Communism is
not of course interrogated any further. Watch this film and the political views
of Trumbo and his colleagues come across as nothing more than a more idealistic
version of Obama-ism. In reality, Trumbo was a Stalinist who pushed for
non-intervention in World War II until Russia was attacked by Hitler. This is
not mentioned or explored in the film at all. In fact, the complexity of these
idealists climbing into bed with a regime soaked red with blood that was
suppressing freedom across large chunks of the globe isn’t even raised. Roach
wants to tell a story about good-old-fashioned-Hollywood-democrats being
persecuted by nasty right-wingers.
Away from the film’s simplicity it’s nothing special. Roach
does competent work and there is the odd good scene. Trumbo himself is
basically a rather selfish arsehole, who judges everyone around him and
frequently ignores his put-upon family. Cranston does a decent job as Trumbo –
but you can’t help but feel his generous Oscar nomination was in part a
recognition for his work on Breaking Bad.
Dean O’Gorman and Christian Berkel get some of the best scenes as Kirk Douglas
and Otto Preminger working with Trumbo on Spartacus
and Exodus. Bizarrely, the film
totally avoids diving into the themes of Spartacus
– or exploring what Trumbo was thinking about when he wrote “I’m Spartacus”,
that paen to unity from the pen of a man abandoned by everyone, surely a hugely
personal line not in the original source material – and instead skirts only on
the surface, ticking off events. It kinda sums the film up: a solid enough to
watch, but basically forgettable, that never engages with the inner lives of
the men it claims to understand.
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