Armageddon Time

The irascible and always enjoyable James Grey is the latest filmmaker to nostalgically recreate the era of his childhood and tell a deeply personal coming-of-age tale. In this case, the narrative centres on a Jewish-American family in Queens. Banks Repeta stars as Grey's surrogate Paul Graff, a kid who discovers the inclusive liberal beliefs his family espouses may not be the truest picture of their feelings. This dichotomy becomes especially clear when he gets into trouble with his friend, an African-American kid named Johnny (Jaylin Webb). The first-rate cast includes Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong as Paul's parents, but their characters and performances don't land with much oomph. Anthony Hopkins is far more effective playing Paul's wise old holocaust-survivor grandpa, who dishes out pearls of wisdom about the immigrant experience and how to live the American Dream—it's a role that could be a bag of cliches in the hands of a less capable actor.

Of all the films of the last three decades in which an acclaimed director looks back on their youth (this year's The Fabelmans, Empire of Light, and Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; last year's Belfast and The Souvenir; as well as Minari, Roma, Lady Bird, The Squid And The Whale, Almost Famous, Dazed and Confused, Crooklyn, etc. etc.), the movie this most reminds me of is Barry Levenson's Avalon from 1990. That was also a heavy on visuals but light on narrative nostalgia piece about Jewish assimilation into American life, though told through several generations of an immigrant family from Poland rather than Russia. And, like Armageddon Time, it's the first disappointing film from a director I admire.

Grey makes some of his points sharply. The parallels between the political climate of the early 1980s when this film is set and today's era are crystalized in the use of Ronald Regan's candidacy appearing on TV and the presence of Donald Trump's sister Maryanne (Jessica Chastain) and their father Fred (John Diehl) appearing for an assembly at Paul's elite private school. The movie's title refers to a theme of Regan's first presidential run that many Republican leaders echo these days about the loss of American values and cultural mores, and the dangers of outsiders and hostile anti-American countries. But Grey is too obvious with these overarching elements and too ambiguous with his main storyline. The film's climax could be a recreation of an actual event from his youth that he's always felt guilty about, rendering the whole picture a kind of long-form cinematic mea culpa, or it may be an entirely fictional occurrence and thus a cinematic indictment of middle-class liberal hypocrisy. It could be both, but the film has a muddled quality that keeps any of it from feeling definitive.

There are some simple ways this movie could have driven home its points without being heavy-handed. For example, the film follows the Driving Miss Daisy model—telling a story about an interracial friendship from the white character's perspective only. Johnny's world is not the one painstakingly recreated by the filmmaker and we only see events through this child's eyes for a few fleeting moments. Of course, excluding that perspective may be part of the point, but it would be clearer if there were a simple scene in which Paul is asked by his parents (or grandfather or anyone) if he's ever been to his "best friend's" house or his neighbourhood. Seeing the young protagonist realize the answer to that question would go a long way in clarifying this picture's themes as well as confronting the viewer with them. Instead, Grey leaves us to figure out for ourselves what to take away from his film. Thus this rather unsubstantial movie may end up being the most divisive picture of the year.