note: this is a reupload from my old substack, which is still technically active but i can’t get into it lol. it’s the piece i’ve written that i’m proudest of yet, and it’s a reminder for me to keep trying to top it. so subscribe to 50firstkatez!!
not sure if I’ve ever been so wrong in my assumptions about a film before armageddon time. and i don’t wholly blame myself; early headlines came out touting the casting of the trumps in the film, as well as mentioning how it would be an “incredibly relevant film to today” which, well, screams “Lib Shit” to my twitter-addicted brain that can only digest what happens in the world through headlines (i’m working on it, i swear). and then i read early reviews of the film from great critics like richard brody, making mention of a token black friend character, and i assumed that the film would just be another tired nostalgia trip and/or a pitiful admission of white guilt, and that gray had fallen off, yadda yadda.
but i should’ve known better because i’ve maintained that, in my humble opinion, james gray is one of the most important contemporary american filmmakers. within his short filmography thus far contains some of the most perceptive, self-effacing, brutally emotional stories of americans, the central contradictions that lie within all of us and how our loyalty to institutions - of family, of state, of business - rob us of our humanity. from his debut crime drama, the quietly devastating little odessa, to the following wahlberg/phoenix-led expansions on that film, the yards and we own the night, all the way through his next three films, even more ambitious in scale (with the lost city of z even stepping out of america), gray has constructed works of art with a seemingly impossible weight that you feel in your bones from start to finish. every shot, cut, and performance has a purpose (much like the great masters whom he admires so) and that purpose is to simultaneously fully entrench you into the interior feelings of his characters, understanding their decisions fully while still never letting them off the hook, and additionally consciously highlight them within the structures of society for which they do their part, whether to good or bad effect (or both).
as i mentioned, his films only grew and grew in scale over the course of the century, which makes it interesting to see that he’s returned to the small-scale storytelling of his origins, going back to a particularly tumultuous time in his childhood, as he stood on the precipice of armageddon and came of age in the process. he admits in interviews that, much like many other great directors recently, the pandemic and the uncertain future of the film industry made him want to rediscover why he fell in love with cinema in the first place. trump was a big part of it too, and i understand why.
i’ve discussed this with friends of mine recently, but there really has been an outwardly rightward shift over the past few years in society and culture. over the past few weeks i’ve had to watch ye, who’s long been my favorite artist and it breaks my heart to see it, fall prey to gross antisemitic rhetoric and openly broadcast it to the world. because of him more celebrities followed suit - m.i.a. and kyrie irving just to name a few - but i think the moment my heart sank was when i went onto social media, the day i saw this movie, by the way, and saw so-called leftists spouting those same evil things in the name of wokeness, as if antisemitism is somehow a politically correct and sane position for all persons of color to have.
all of this was fresh on my mind going into the film, and in spite of my skepticism i really wanted to be wrong and to fall headfirst into those familiar gray rhythms and tensions for the eighth consecutive time. and lo and behold, i did.
i think the greatest success of armageddon time is its microscopic specificity contrasted by its cosmic macroscopic point of view. this story truly happened to gray, and he has a lot of complex emotions about it that he has decided to lay bare for us to see, warts and all. his stand-in paul graff, played brilliantly and honestly by banks repeta, is an awkward, lonely, at times rude and rebellious young child, doing such things as ordering dumplings during family dinner because he hates his mom’s spaghetti. he’s a child who’s very much conscious of the way tradition and institution is trapping him and dampening his creative instincts, but he is unaware of the opportunity he now has to move past that. the film opens on his first day at public school, where he meets the similarly rebellious johnny, played equally masterfully by jaylin webb (in spite of a few lines of dialogue he was given that made me laugh but i’ll give the neolib comrade a pass on that one) in a role that i think will go greatly misunderstood by most. what follows is a deeply complex moral tale that earns its sense of importance naturally and fills you with the same sense of doom and portent that gray must undoubtedly be feeling, yet by the end that is transformed into an optimism that is far too beautiful for me to write off.
johnny could have easily been embarrassingly written is the thing. as many have stated, he’s not a particularly fleshed out character, we don’t learn too much about his personal life beyond what he tells paul, and his function in the story is undoubtedly to further paul’s understanding of how the world works. and yet, there is still such a depth to him that i think will go undervalued. he makes every moment of bonding between the two kids that much more believable, such as in the utterly wonderful scene where him and paul smoke weed for the first time in the school bathroom. gray acknowledges his limitations with writing johnny in his and jeremy strong’s recent interview with vulture mag, where he compares that character to cathy moriarty’s in raging bull (i thought of anna paquin in the irishman so, similar wavelength), and states how he didn’t know enough about the real-life analogue to johnny, and any overextension would have been dishonest on his part.
that being said, the moment which cements johnny as an incredible character is when, after we witness paul and his whole family attend the funeral of his grandpa - played by anthony hopkins in one of my absolute favorite performances of the year and also of his whole career, wild considering what a massive career it is - paul and johnny have a conversation about their individual hopes for the future, and then gray quickly cuts to a vision of johnny saying goodbye to his ill grandma, the only person who was around to take care of him, as he got ready to run from the foster care employees after him. this little insert completely ripped my heart in two, and filled a whole history and weight of memory for this young johnny that really makes you understand his perspective of the world, as a disenfranchised black kid looked down upon by every figure of authority in his life, equally as much as our main protagonist.
and that’s one key aspect of this film, the weight of memory: the impermanence of family and familiarity in the face of these unchanging evil institutions which gray loathes so greatly, and how nostalgically returning to those memories may not do anything but reveal our greatest failings. but he finds a real value in those failings in my opinion that goes far beyond any accusations of white guilt. a good friend of mine has talked about how important jewish identity is to this film, where after world war ii the diaspora of jewish people felt they had to earn their seat at the table as a reaction to the cruelty they had to face (on this note, i’m excited to read more takes from black and/or jewish writers on this film). this reason is why, after finding out about the aforementioned weed incident, paul’s father beats him viciously and his parents and grandparents decide to send him to an expensive private school, one where maryanne trump delivers inspirational platitudes as if they were hard-earned truths and the most prejudiced attitudes are ingrained in every student. gray mentions how in directing the abuse scene he told legendary dp darius khondji to think of the shining, and i think that is a great reference point for gray’s central concern here, of the corrupting influence of institutions that i’ve brought up so many times already. there’s a scene where johnny comes looking for paul after his shift in schools, where paul, reluctantly yet fearfully, shrugs him off, and as he turns back around to the new “friends” he’s made they tease him with racial slurs for hanging out with johnny and pereta’s performance in this moment is so uneasy, anxious, based very purely in survival instinct it really did feel like a horror movie, the private school almost like the overlook hotel in the controlling force it exerts among its inhabitants. and gray’s biggest fear here, to my eyes, is that it started to control paul too…
anne hathaway and jeremy strong both play paul’s parents, authentically drawn from gray’s own, perfectly with no holds barred as far as showing them for how good they could be and how, by the same coin, prejudiced they could be as well. and its that tension, between knowing that people are prejudiced against you while still understanding that you have your own privilege, that is so important to every character here. mr. and mrs. graff are shown as being deeply afraid of the upcoming reagan presidency, but by the same token they focus so much on upward mobility themselves. as i said above, they want their children to have a seat at the table no matter the cost, because they feel that’s all their sacrifices thus far are worth. it reminded me of my own parents, first-generation indian immigrants who went through a lot of financial strife to get to the middle-class place we’re at, and so their way of raising me was of teaching me the virtue of having a stable career, of “playing the game,” of working your way up to the top no matter who you step on along the way. because they’ve been stepped on too, they know what it’s like. even johnny isn’t above prejudice, as we get a scene where he describes the mentally disabled children of their school with the r-slur. reminds me again of those fake leftists, too, in one breath vouching for equality while in another spreading hateful rhetoric. this central contradiction is why the ending doesn’t ring hollow - i’ve seen someone compare it to to kill a mockingbird which is wholly unfair - and johnny, who sacrifices his own freedom for paul, doesn’t just feel like a character growth moment for a white protagonist, but as a symbol of someone who never had any hope because no one was there to help him, to fight for him, and his show of strength in the face of adult cops treating him like an adult becomes a beacon for young paul to follow for the future. with the final shot, as paul walks out of the looming evil walled fortress that is his private school, he’s rejecting his prejudice, not out of pure guilt, but out of solidarity, of a newfound understanding of how corrupt and racist america is and how, through an awareness of what intersectionality means, he can continue to fight against it.
the film hit me on such a personal level from so many different angles - i don’t know if i covered everything i wanted to, but i’ve rambled for so long it’s probably best i stop somewhere lol - that i needed to spend an hour at a park next to the movie theater by myself. this park was one my parents used to bring me to ever since i was months old; they often would tell me about the baby swings that i would get into and refuse to leave no matter how hard they tried. i looked at those swings and thought about that; i walked by the tennis courts as i recalled how bad i was at tennis and yet how much fun it would be to land serves with my friends; i walked by the trees, with their vibrant fall colors, and thought about the many fall seasons i experienced over the course of my life, how much i’ve grown as a person from year to year, and how much growing i still have to do; i thought about so many memories, so much nostalgia but so many of my own regrets as well, even my own privileges that i’ve been afforded. i’m a 22 year old brown queer trans person, sure, but i’m closeted enough that no one actually perceives who i truly am beyond my closest friends. not to mention, i have a stable job that earns me enough to save money for the future, an opportunity many of my friends, not to mention millions upon millions of people in america and the rest of the world, do not have. it can be tough for any of us to accept our privilege; no matter how “woke” you think you are, you are always stepping on someone. it’s an inherent reality of capitalist systems, something gray understands better than many filmmakers today. but i think this intensely personal experience he depicts, in spite of how much of it is distinctly jewish and 1980s, and from a neoliberal perspective as well, managed to be very personal to me and i think to those open enough to understand it, question it, but still see their own experiences within, it will be a very personal film to you too.