The Apprenticethe biopic of Donald Trump directed by Ali Abbasi, has been revealed in a comical trailer.
We must admit that we are reassured every time we have news from The Apprentice. A film with a delicate subject, an outrageous public figure, and a director with a brilliant approach to the myth of freak… Last June, we were still wondering why Hollywood did not want to release The Apprenticethe biopic dedicated to the media and political monster Donald Trump. Problem solved since the film dedicated to the rise of the tycoon Trump in the 70s/80s will indeed be distributed in American theaters from October.
The film directed by Ali Abbasi, and starring Sebastian Stan (The Winter Soldier) as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong (Succession) in that of the paranoid and legendary cynicism lawyer Roy Cohn has just offered himself a first trailer that highlights the ambiguous links that existed between the two men.
The Apprentice sa toile
The trailer opens to the sound of a particularly angry version of the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. The scent of the 70s is omnipresent, with costumes and sets that exude the end of the disco years. The sequences alternating between shots of an immense, almost Dantesque New York and close-ups of the actors Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong follow one another at breakneck speed, probably as quickly as Trump’s meteoric rise.
The trailer focuses mainly on the very strange relationship between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn. The former looking for a kind of mentor in the latter, and a gateway into politics. And the latter finding material to create a monster in the person of daddy’s boy “Donnie” Trump, who he will take his wing to make a titan of, in every sense of the word.
It should be noted that the American trailer is very different from the European version. To the sound of saturated guitar, we see a Trump entering a world of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, as in a Trainspotting of the political world. A kind of Trump-Spotting? This trailer seems to depict more the journey of a man who finds himself caught up in mechanisms that are beyond his control, the opposite of the discourse of the French trailer.
As he had explained to VarietyAli Abbasi did not want to be satisfied with telling the story of President Trump. Through Trump’s journey and rise, he tells a historical turning point in the temporality of America: the shift towards ultra-liberalism, and the abandonment of moral and social values on the sole altar of profit and all-powerful capitalism, with its improbable corporate wars which are as many ego wars.
“We wanted to make a punk rock version of a historical film, which meant we had to keep a certain energy, a certain spirit, without being too anxious about the details and what’s good and what’s not. […] America is a country… but it’s also an empire. I was more concerned with the empire part.”
The Apprentice will be released in American cinemas on October 11, and in French theaters from October 9, 2024.