You can’t fault James Gray’s determination to just leave it out there. A less-subtle film-maker might heighten apparent provocations into defining moments, but Gray, close to 30 years making features, is prepared to allow audiences to do what they wish with his films.
Take the appearance of two elder Trumps in this fascinating, perplexing, impeccably acted study of a Jewish family at the start of the Reagan era. The former president’s father and aunt turn up at a private school to spread their wisdom among the students. “In this institution you can be whoever you want to be ... It won’t be because you got a handout,” Maryanne Trump (best not to spoil who’s playing her) tells a bunch of students plainly profiting from capital outlay. As soon as the Trumps are there, they are gone.
Gray’s lack of interest in spelling things out may have contributed to the underwhelming receipts for his work. That situation looks likely to continue for the moment. Armageddon Time – named for both a Clash song and an out-there quote from Reagan – begins very much in the style of a Woody Allen film.
We are among a bustling immigrant family in the director’s home borough of Queens, New York. The grandfather (Anthony Hopkins, transcendent) is fragile and wise. The mom (Anne Hathaway, terrific) is permanently at wits’ end. You know how it goes. But, as ever, the director of Ad Astra and The Immigrant refuses to make it easy for us. Jeremy Strong makes a multifaceted enigma of the dad: ruthlessly violent, merrily playful, desperate to keep the children safe. Neither a villain nor a hero. He is just left out there.
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Banks Repeta is simultaneously delicate and abrasive as stand-in for the young Gray. This Paul Graff makes friends with a black student (Jaylin Webb) at his public school but, once moved to the posh academy, he finds barriers erected. When the boys get arrested we get grim confirmation of how prejudice functions in the police department.
You couldn’t call Armageddon Time a work of realism. Darius Khondji shoots in a crepuscular murk that suggests we are forever emerging from half-sleep. The dialogue occasionally leans into the theatrical. But Gray connects closely with genuine dilemmas. There is something here about how even the most decent people will occasionally ride their unfair advantages.
Some may argue that Hopkins’s saintly grand patriarch verges too far into the unreal, but this is such a strong performance – as good as anything in the Welshman’s 60-year career – that one is left not just believing in a wholly good man, but finding such a rare creature interesting.
Perhaps Gray’s best film so far.
