Yes, ‘The Apprentice’ is a political film, despite what the cast say
Donald Trump tried everything possible to block the release of The Apprentice. Friends of the politician even donated millions to the production in its early stages in the hopes of gaining a more positive perspective. It was reported that Trump’s attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to the crew, attempting to prevent “all marketing, distribution, and publication of the Movie.” The film has been in an active battle with a former president and current presidential candidate, so why are the cast trying to claim it’s not political?
Maria Bakalova, who plays Ivana Trump, the politician’s first wife, said to The News Movement, “I keep repeating that this is not a political movie, and I completely stand behind this. It’s not a political movie. It’s about somebody who, nowadays, is a politician but back in the ‘70s, ‘80s, he wasn’t a political.” While it’s true that the time period that the film focuses on as it looks at Trump’s origin story comes nowhere near his political career, this comment separating the person they portray in the film and the person Trump was from the person he is today feels not only ignorant but dangerous given the timing of the film’s release.
The Apprentice makes no attempt to hide Trump. All the characters have real names, these are real life events, this, largely, is the truth of the politician’s career. That alone is enough to make the point that this is a political film. Bakalova is correct that the character in the film is not a politician, you can’t make a biopic about a real person and then attempt to separate them from the real life person off screen. By the mere fact that this is a film about a politician, it becomes a political film. Add in the fact that Trump is at present a politician in an active race for election, campaigning around the country as this film hits cinemas, and it not only becomes a political film but becomes a piece of propaganda, even if the cast can’t decide what side it falls on.
However, the film does pick a side. Through the movie, director Ali Abbasi takes a tour through Trump’s earliest crimes as we see Sebastian Stan’s take on the figure slowly morph more and more into the man the world knows today. Under the teaching of Roy Cohn, three rules of business are laid out that still feel like Trump’s gospel today; attack, deny, always claim victory. We see Trump and Cohn blackmailing government officials and businessmen for tax right-offs. We see his lawyers covering over major scandals like the Trump family being accused of segregation in their apartment buildings. We even see Trump violently rape his first wife, who Bakalova plays. The Apprentice makes an undeniable argument that Donald Trump is an awful, criminal and uncaring person – so surely this is a film that rallies for the Democrats by tarnishing the republican candidate?
After seeing the film, I left the cinema conflicted. Even as the movie shows so many evil deeds committed by Trump, it never truly provides a clear and outright statement of condemnation against the politician we know today. It could be argued that it doesn’t have to, that Abbasi is choosing to show, not tell and leave it up to the audience to see these acts and draw their own conclusion that Trump certainly is not the kind of man that should be in charge or representative of a country. But given the timing of the movie, it doesn’t feel enough.
The world is only two weeks out from the US Election in which Kamala Harris is running against Trump, a man who has not only been voted out once but has been charged with federal crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against the rights of citizens. The crimes shown in The Apprentice are only the start, committed right at the beginning of Trump’s career. So while Abbasi is making a statement by showing them and by making this film at all, given the further crimes that the figure committed as he’s gained more power, and given the potential for this movie-villain to be given even more power in only a few weeks, it almost feels like The Apprentice had a kind of responsibility here.
If they were going to lean into a political conversation and use the upcoming election to market the film as they have done with the choice of release date, it feels like they should be making it clearer what it is this movie is trying to say, which is that Trump is a bad and dangerous man. Or, at the very least, they should stop claiming that this film isn’t political, given the intense and extremely serious political climate in which they’re releasing it.
The only thing that soothed my sense of ill-ease around the film’s timing and the cast’s lack of bravery around its politics is the fact that The Apprentice feels like it hits Trump exactly where it could hurt him. In Cohn’s rules that he passes onto his protégé, the third is no matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat. We’ve seen this time and time again in Trump’s public life as he desperately spins every loss or every takedown into a positive somehow. But as The Apprentice refuses to make a clear defeating statement against Trump, it instead lives in the grey area that the politician hates; embarrassment. This movie embarrasses Trump as the audience laughs at him getting liposuction and hair transplants and often being just generally shy or pathetic or stupid. Even the decision to call it The Apprentice, belittling his position to merely that of a mentee rather than a mogul, feels embarrassing. It feels more like this than the film laying out his crimes; it’s this mocking that Trump’s camp would have been desperate to hide as it cannot be spun in his favour.
Maybe it’s all for nothing. Back in 2016, when Trump was elected for the first time, the world was in shock. For those outside of the republican bubble, it felt utterly impossible that he would win, but he did. We all exist within our own echo chambers, and The Apprentice is likely part of that. Realistically, it’s not a film you’d choose to go and see if you like Trump or even if you were unsure who you might vote for, so chances are its depiction, or lack of bold political statement will make no difference and sway no opinions. But there is something off about the cast, who all play real-life figures and real-life politicians in a current battle for power, trying to separate the movie they made from the real-life political climate and context it exists within. There is no way that a film about Donald Trump can be non-political when Trump, for our sins, is one of politic’s top names.
