Some movies have less success than they intend. It’s difficult to fully parse writer/director James Gray’s white guilt manifesto Armageddon TimeHis sequel to his sad-dad opus Ad AstraWithout falling for its good intentions. But we’ve seen this movie before, the one where a white person learns about racism to the detriment of their Black counterpart. In this case, the familiar narrative takes place in 1980, in a corner of Gray’s childhood neighborhood in Queens. Serving as Gray’s autobiographical stand-in is Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a petulant, artistically misunderstood Jewish kid navigating the uneasy racial politics of his household.
Paul draws a sketch of his sixth-grade teacher Mr. Turkeltaub, (Andrew Polk), and it is a mixture of a man-turkey and a man-machine. Paul proudly shows the cartoon to his classmates and invites the wrathful teacher. “You think this is appropriate?” asks Mr. Turkeltaub. Paul says, “I just wanted everybody to have a good time,”
Johnny Davis (JaylinWebb) is the only one who stands up for Paul during this grilling. He is a Black kid who has been repeating this grade. Both boys are punished by being forced to wash the blackboard. Behind his teacher’s back, Paul does a disco move to the appreciation of his classmates. At their outburst of giggles, the instructor doesn’t chastise Paul; he blames Johnny. This will not be the only time Johnny feels the consequences of Paul’s shortsighted actions. The bulk of the film, however, uses their hijinks as the backdrop to Paul’s troubled family life, helmed by his mother Esther (Anne Hathaway), his father Irving (Jeremy Strong), and the anti-Black opinions that thrum through their politically moderate Jewish household.
Gray’s film lacks real introspection.
Armageddon Time finds a surprising stability in Paul’s home despite his family’s toxic dynamic. The opening dinner scene aptly depicts the family’s dysfunction, with a bullying older brother and an authoritative father who is often abusive. Strong is a brutal, violent father who plays with a strong performance. Paul’s mother, who serves as the head of the Parent Teacher Association, often succumbs to her young son’s charm. Paul’s mother is often unable to resist her son’s charms, and orders dumplings instead of her homemade food. He still calls.
The calm center of the family is Paul’s impish yet morally resolute grandfather Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins). By offering sage advice, Aaron often calms his grandson’s ill temper. Hopkins’s performance is delicate and physical, based on caved-in postures. He also walks with a slow pace. Gray may not like Hathaway’s naturalistic performance, where she wriggles in the large ensemble with ease, but Hopkins’ star power overtakes Gray. Paul is a reflection on these adults. He idolizes his grandfather and evangelizes the mother while avoiding his father.
To Gray’s credit, he does comprehend the tenuous proximity white Jewish people in America have sometimes occupied in relation to white supremacy. We see how casually Paul’s family dispenses with bigoted quips. And it’s brought into greater focus after Paul is caught in the boys bathroom smoking weed with Johnny.
His alarmed parents hurriedly transfer him to his brother’s affluent private school where the likes of Fred Trump (John Diehl) and his daughter Maryanne Trump (Jessica Chastain) serve as donors/mentors, espousing bootstrapping talking points to the kids. It’s all part of the Graff family’s partial assimilation into white American society, one that required they change their name to avoid antisemitism and asks them to essentially pass. This is self-preservation for the Graffs.
In reality, the film is an accidental metaphor for how little politically moderate White people have really considered their role in the anti-Black rise in Trumpian rhetoric.
Through Paul’s impressionable eyes, Gray documents the varied ways Paul’s family tacitly supports white supremacy. We witness Paul’s family spewing anti-Black slurs to his family as well as outsiders. We see his white entitlement that allows him to dodge punishment. We observe how often he brazenly brags about his white privilege by boasting to Johnny about his family’s wealth. However, in one scene, Paul’s grandfather implores him to speak up for the people of color around him, saying, “You’re going to be a mensch… They have never had your benefits.”
Learn more about the latest innovations in Entertainment? Register for MashableTop Stories Newsletter today.
In Repeta’s measured performance you can sense the challenges a young Gray must have confronted. In Paul’s every capitulation to his bigoted classmates, Repeta externalizes the complex moral battlefield raging within the character. It’s a tender performance trapped in a politically wayward movie.
This supposedly morally complex story, partly based on Gray’s childhood, lacks bite, lacks true introspective, and lacks any notion resembling interest in aesthetically and narratively humanizing its injured party: the lone Black character, Johnny. In fact, the film is a metaphor for how little politically moderate White people have ever considered their role in the current anti-Black rise to Trumpian rhetoric.
Armageddon TimeIt aims at proving that anti-Blackness is as terrible as antisemitism (in the wider world, Black Jews feel most of the brunt). Kanye West’s recent espousing of antisemitic Trumpian rhetoric also reminds the American public about this very real fact. Gray’s use of Johnny as an undefined instrument is a sad reminder that Gray does not address the other in any meaningful way.
Gray succeeds at interrogating how the wake of historical antisemitism can lead a family like the Graffs to align with white oppressors through assimilation and capitulation in name of self-preservation, or in the words of Paul’s grandmother, to “get a seat at the table.” Gray, however, succumbs to his guilt by erasing Johnny’s personhood from the film. This unwittingly makes Black audiences feel as invisible as Johnny.
Armageddon Time Hollywood is failing to recognize the importance of race.
Hollywood fails to portray the inner lives and struggles of politically flawed white people, in large part because they often do so at the expense of Black sacrifice. Films such as Green Book, Miss Daisy DrivingAnd The Green Mile — all movies that also received widespread praise from white critics — similarly feature bare-bones Black characters with just enough personhood to not only illuminate the white character’s struggle but also to provide partial grounding for the Black character’s inevitable, nonsensical self-sacrifice.
In his essay collection The Devil finds WorkJames Baldwin wrote about the 1958 sparse setting in his essay The Defiant OnesIt explains why Noah (Sidney Poitier), falls from the train to save John (Tony Curtis), who is a racist man that he hated just an hour earlier. The film operates under the belief that Black people inherently know their white counterpart’s life holds greater value than their own. Its own part. Armageddon Time provides so few reasons for why Paul and Johnny are friends; why at every point Johnny takes the fall for Paul; why Johnny implicitly goes along with Paul’s schemes. The only spark for their friendship — other than their role as class clowns — is Paul’s invitation to Johnny to sleep in his clubhouse, which is just a shed in his backyard. Johnny doesn’t realize how dangerous it is to be near white people. This is even for a child.
Through Paul’s narrow vantage point, Gray often narratively shortchanges Johnny with broad character beats: He loves the Sugar Hill Gang; he wants to become an astronaut in Florida; his grandmother is battling dementia. We never see Johnny’s much-talked-about stepbrother. We barely see his grandmother. (In the film’s other scenes, Webb performs some exceptional heavy lifting to imbue this character with a modicum of personhood). Paul’s myopia is, of course, by design: The scarce interest he takes in the personal life of his best friend illuminates his nauseating self-interest. That insularity, however, shouldn’t spill over to Gray’s gaze or his writing.
Gray made a film about a young white Jewish boy who learns a shocking lesson about his entitlement. His film, however, perpetuates the same power dynamics by Gray and Darius Khondji (cinematographer).Bardo) utilizing privileged lighting. Paul’s pale complexion and ginger hair glow in the warm autumnal sun; conversely, Johnny’s skin is zapped of all vibrancy and radiance, whittling down his personhood.
Compare Johnny’s scenes to Brian Tyree Henry in Talking to Beale Street — the two actors share a similar complexion — and you can see the difference between a director who prioritizes the luminous quality of Black skin and one who doesn’t. In Hollywood’s Dark Side: White Screens/Black Images, James A. Snead’s observation about representation, when applied to lighting, hits with equal devastation: “the portrayal of blacks in American cinema has been testimony to the fact that ‘what we don’t see’ and ‘what they don’t see’ hurts us — precisely because we are what we don’t see.”
Armageddon Time There is also a second version. The Defiant Ones.
There are other failures in the film: The comfortable camera movements, which easily glide, snaking us through the Graff family’s interpersonal relationship, are equally reduced to mawkish, manipulative ends when the same technique is employed in a scene where Paul flees from police. (The set-up of Hopkins’ final monologue is also sentimentalized drivel). Khondji’s distant framing and the editing by Scott Morris of the climactic sequence of Paul and Johnny’s downfall are similarly calculated to the nauseating effect of us experiencing the panic endured by Paul, rather than the emotions felt by Johnny.
Gray, to his credit, understands that Paul’s remorse — displayed during a later heart-to-heart with his dad — is a privilege. He is able to gain self-development and learn from his mistakes. But is his regret on the same level as Johnny’s life-altering predicament? Is it possible for a white audience to feel the pain of Johnny and empathize?
You can’t help but recall Baldwin’s thoughts on The Defiant Ones. “[Poitier]Baldwin stated that Baldwin jumps off the train to reassure whites, to let them know that although they may have made mistakes, they have done nothing to deserve hatred. “The reassurance is fake, the need for it is ignoble
The end of Armageddon Time An image illustrates how narrow its white gaze never fully faces. Paul’s parents watch in stunned disbelief as Ronald Reagan wins the presidency. There is little doubt that Paul’s mother and father do not see themselves as racist, precisely because they do not support Reagan. This election night moment is a mirror to the self-involved white moderates who proclaimed themselves not-Trump-supporters because of Trump family scenes.
At the school dance, Paul defiantly walked out as Fred Trump addressed the students. Is his departure meant to be a rejection of his parents’ desired assimilation? Or is Paul really a Trumpian stooge defining himself? The Clash’s quick needle drop “Armageddon Time”It suggests the latter. The film’s aesthetic politics portends the latter.
With Armageddon Time, Gray, like so many other white folks since 2020, misses the opportunity to fully process his guilt in a way that isn’t self-indulgent. It also deals with Jewish identity and antisemitism. However, the film often targets well-meaning white people looking to ease their pain by acknowledging their privilege. Despite its desires, Armageddon Time is a bundle of empty, over-calibrated gestures — gestures unlikely to signal to Black viewers that white people, in a post-Trump presidency, finally get it.
Armageddon Time opens in select theaters on Oct. 28 and in theaters everywhere Nov. 4.
