Review: Trumbo
"I've got nobody else to be. I did what I had to do." The words are spoken by actor Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg), but they could also have come from the mouth of the man on the other end of the conversation, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston). Trumbo is the subject of Jay Roach's film, itself based on the biography by Bruce Alexander Cook, and it presents the man in mostly heroic mode as a man who underwent many personal sacrifices to stand up for what was right.
Dalton Trumbo may not necessarily be a familiar name for those born after a certain age, but he was one of Hollywood's busiest screenwriters in the 1930s and 1940s, scribing such popular films as Kitty Foyle, for which Ginger Rogers won her Best Actress Oscar, and A Guy Named Joe starring Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne (Steven Spielberg remade the film as Always in 1989). He was also a published author - his 1939 anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, was critically acclaimed. Trumbo was also politically active and outspoken, known for championing workers' rights and being a card-carrying member of the U.S. Communist Party. It bears remembering at this point that membership to the Communist Party was not illegal, nor was it so frowned upon at the time as Communists were opposed to the rise of Fascism and National Socialism in Europe. However, continually shifting alliances between the United States and the Soviet Union made for a mercurial political climate. What was once acceptable during World War II was now being touted as treason.
It is during these highly charged times that Trumbo opens. Trumbo and nine other industry figures, including friend and fellow screenwriter Arlen Hird (Louis C.K., playing a composite of several real-life individuals), are castigated for their personal politics, brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D.C., and are held in contempt and sent to jail for refusing to name names. Trumbo is the most radical of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" and, as screenwriter John McNamara depicts him, the most crusading. Hird shares his ideology but reminds him that not everyone can afford to wait out what is fast proving to be a losing battle. "You talk like a radical, but live a rich guy," Hird notes.
Roach maintains a pace so zippy as to be rollicking in Trumbo's first half, but it's not too long before one realises that the scenes are more or less the same. Trumbo is persecuted and those who orbit this unintentional martyr are either allies - his supportive wife Cleo (Diane Lane), director Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel), actor Kirk Douglas (Dean O'Gorman), and low-budget film producer Frank King (John Goodman) - or enemies - the overly patriotic John Wayne (David James Elliott), producer and director Sam Wood (John Getz), and influential gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), all of whom join forces to ensure the Hollywood Ten are blacklisted. The simplicity and repetition of the rhetoric is nonetheless entertaining, but Trumbo is more interesting in its second half when the imprisoned screenwriter is released back into society.
Forced to sell his family ranch and move into the suburbs, Trumbo takes whatever work he can get, accepting low pay for writing schlocky screenplays for which he receives no credit. Two of the screenplays he sells - Roman Holiday and The Brave One - are signed under false names and go on to win him Oscars which he cannot claim. In fact, Trumbo is most prolific during this period in exile. Working around the clock, aided by amphetamines, he endangers not only his health but his home life. He cannot help but be himself, which is to be a writer but also someone whose principles can veer into the self-righteous. Trumbo allows for a modicum of understanding for people like Edward G. Robinson, who were forced to name names so they could once again earn a living. Every one was a victim of those times, some more than others. Homes were lost, families disintegrated, livelihoods destroyed. What would you have done? It's not so easy a question to answer.
Cranston is unsurprisingly exemplary, but it would be remiss to say that he is overshadowed now and again by the impressive supporting cast. Mirren is the most vicious of vipers, Stuhlbarg is fast becoming practically every film's invaluable asset, Berkel is Preminger incarnate, Louis C.K. is wonderful and essentially playing his persona in period garb, and Goodman and Stephen Root are aces as the Weinstein-like King Brothers.
Trumbo
Directed by: Jay Roach
Written by: John McNamara; based on the biography by Bruce Alexander Cook
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Elle Fanning, Louis C.K., John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alan Tudyk, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Dean O'Gorman, Stephen Root, David James Elliott, John Getz, Roger Bart, Christian Berkel, Richard Portnow
