Armageddon Time offers a coming-of-age tale that’s both timeless and timely
James Gray's most personal film, a semi-autobiographical drama boosted by solid performances from Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway, may also be his best
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There’s a moment in Armageddon Time where Jeremy Strong is the ultimate lovable goofball dad, singing a wake-up-and-go-to-school song into a kitchen utensil while busting out horrendous dance moves. Later he beats the snot out of his terrified youngest son, who cowers in a bathtub, crying “not again.” Later still, you see him begging and pleading with Fate to let his kid catch a break and come out of a dangerous situation unscathed. It is this collection (and more) of heartbreaking contradictions that lends James Gray’s memoir film such depth, and why it should be treasured. And Strong isn’t even the main character.
Front and center is young Banks Repeta’s Paul Graff, a 12-year-old proxy for Gray during a pivotal mostly true incident from his childhood. He’s from a working class Jewish family in Queens, and his refugee grandparents (Anthony Hopkins and Tovah Feldshuh) are still catching their breath 35 years after the end of World War II. Paul and his older brother are the assimilationist’s dream: if they work hard and follow the rules, they’ll get “a seat at the table,” something the previous generations never had.
But Paul is at an age where life is just a big joke. He is rude to his parents at the dinner table because he knows he can get away with it. (His mother, played by Anne Hathaway, has a hard time hiding the smile when he’s acting out; she loves him too much.) Soon, though, he starts getting in trouble at school. He’s been hanging out with a Black boy named Johnny (Jaylin Webb), which triggers a complex series of reactions from his family. Paul will go to a private school.
This may not read like a great cinematic conflict that could interest an observer, but Gray’s strict eye for detail somehow makes it so. (It also leads to some additional complications.) This is a family keenly aware of the disadvantages brought about by prejudice. They are not right wing folk. (“What a schmuck!” Dad spits back at the TV when candidate Ronald Reagan is sucking up to religious conservatives.) But the brass ring for this family is social and financial safety, and the repeated acceptance that “life is not fair” is what ultimately dictates their principles. They will, essentially, give up on a fight for social equality to secure what they want. Paul will go to the snooty school (and have a strange run-in with the Trump family), and then get a well-paying job. If you will it, it is no dream.
Sounds heavy, but you should know that the movie is also an energetic look at growing up, very much in the François Truffaut tradition. There are trips to the arcade, chats in a backyard clubhouse, and a touching cross-generational outing to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to launch a mini-rocket. (It must be stated that Anthony Hopkins, age 84, is somehow getting better as the years go on.)
There’s also a timeliness to one of the central themes of the film, which is the position of American Jews on the spectrum of prejudicial victimhood. (Five minutes on Twitter any day will corroborate this.) What this movie shows is something obvious to many, but not to all: antisemitism is real and devastating, and most Jews in America also have white privilege. This is not an either-or. Those who can’t get their heads around this only need to watch this movie. What’s important, of course, is to learn from it, to recognize microaggressions when they happen, and to do something about it.
Armageddon Time, however, is too cool for any after-school special vibe. It asks more questions than it answers, and doesn’t let anybody off the hook. It’s also a great movie for anyone who grew up in New York City area in 1980, with the right needle drops and art direction. This is James Gray’s eighth feature and, in the end, its simplest. It may also be his best.
13 Comments
I can’t believe the internet ever doubted Anne Hathaway.
Having never watched The Princess Diaries, Anne Hathaway has always had a special place in my heart from being on that short-lived TV show Get Real. It was one of those fourth wall-breaking shows where the characters address the camera, and in an episode (maybe the first?) she’s in her room talking about whatever, the camera pans across an Indigo Girls poster, and in a peak 1999 frisson of homophobia, she says to the audience something like “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not a lesbian”. I was, like, 10 and thinking that maybe I was, and Anne Hathaway definitely had a lot to do with it.
We were so pointlessly mean to that goofy theater dork.Honestly after RACHEL GETTING MARRIED if you weren’t all in on her that’s on you, though.
I still don’t understand the vitriol she gets for being a fairly well-rounded acting talent who can do drama and comedy, sing, live performance, sketch work, with an eclectic choice of roles over the years. It is like someone makes some type of offhand evaluation and everyone piles on whether they believe it or not just to be included. Bless her, she keeps going forward and making good choices over and over.
I just watched the trailer, and for some reason I’m crying. This looks great.
True story: Jeremy Strong adopted a kid and beat him up just to get into character.
How is that not Ray Romano?
Does look great, and resonates.
– Italian family from a diverse New Jersey community where neighbors petitioned to prevent my dad from building a house ‘cause we weren’t the right kinda white – everyone was welcomed as long as they stayed in their hood. Took a while for my dad (and all of us) to realize what our black fellow citizens were going through.
Sure. Movies have been interrogating the limits of whiteness since the Jazz Singer!
Saw this trailer before another movie and it got straight up laughed at (and also booed a little) for its very noticeable absence of Jewish actors. They definitely made some choices there…
What’s funny to me about the issues raised about non-Jewish actors in this movie is that, in my family, my great great grandfather emigrated from the Pale to Liverpool, before later generations moved on to the US. So some of my older relatives sound a hell of a lot more like Anthony Hopkins does in this than they do like Mel Brooks.
I saw this, and sorry to piss on everybody’s parade but it’s not that great. It’s 100% unsurprising from beginning to end. The kid is an idiot (“I didn’t know that smoking in the bathroom was wrong, I didn’t know it was weed” “let’s steal a computer, nobody will notice”) and the parents are only defined in relation to the kid so they don’t have enough to do to get the oscars they clearly want. Also…they don’t seem very Jewish. I thought “The Immigrant” was prestige porn that was extremely boring also, this guy has only made a few movies I didn’t think were pretty lousy.
Hollywood has a strong record of rarely casting actual Jews to play Jewish characters. Especially women (see Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans; I can’t imagine a less-Jewish actress). Jewish directors seem to find real Jewish women pretty repulsive. The self-loathing is palpable. I’m a little surprised Tovah Feldshuh was able to sneak in.