Trumbo: A Review

This past Sunday after church Jan and I saw Trumbo.

My goodness, Brian Cranston has come a long way from playing dad on Malcolm in the Middle! He really is one of the most interesting actors of our day. And, he was given a pretty meaty role, playing a central figure back when the great Red Scare moved to Hollywood.

Biopics are always problematic endeavors. And making a movie about controversial figures at the center of political maelstroms when at least some of the players are still around must be even more difficult.

We went to see the movie with just the general knowledge about the characters and the times any moderately well educated person should have. And as people broadly speaking “of the left,” we were inclined to see Trumbo as the victim of a witch-hunt. Precisely what after that we didn’t have any particular opinions.

After seeing the movie and before writing anything I thought I should do a little research. Roaming around the web I found a fist full of right wing sites that deplored that central figure, Dalton Trumbo as well as those others caught up in the search for communists from that time, as anything but villains of the worst sort, who got a lot less than they deserved. Specifically they trumpet that Trumbo was nothing but a Stalinist who faithfully followed the twists and turns out of Moscow, sneer at those taken in by the rehabilitation of this vile man, and call on any right thinking person to avoid this film as if it were the plague.

As this is a serious charge about a man who is celebrated in the film as being more about social injustice, more informed by a deep American patriotism than any kind of doctrinaire Stalinist. According Ron Briley’s History News Network Review of “Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical” by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo, Ceplair acknowledged Trumbo “was a member of the Communist Party from 1943 to 1948 and for a short period of time in 1956.”

However, Ceplair also asserts “He was neither a doctrinaire Marxist nor an apologist for Stalin and the Soviet Union.” Instead, “Trumbo was drawn to the party for its antifascist stance, and his membership was a product of his friendship with writers Hugo Butler, Ring Lardner Jr., Ian Hunter, and Michael Wilson. Ceplair asserts, ‘In sum, he was persuaded to join the party by the motivations and actions of the Communist Party members he knew, not by the worldwide goals of Soviet communism.’”

Briley concludes “While no orthodox Marxist, Trumbo was a man of the political left who attempted to bring some unity between Popular front radicals and the New Left of the 1960s. A man of principle, he refused to compromise with HUAC and could be quite combative, but he also attempted to understand those who named names before the committee.”

From this distance it is probably impossible to know what’s what with any certainty. But it seems sure enough he was not following the turns and twists being dictated by the horrors in the Soviet Union. And, what’s particularly important is that this guy who loved the good life ever as much as his fellow men and women, when push came to shove, stood up for some pretty basic American principals. In some ways Trumbo is us at our best.

With that, back to the movie.

The film portrays someone very much as is presented in the biography Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical. While it is still a bit early in the game, reviews appear mixed, but on balance positive. As I write this Rotten Tomatoes’ professional score is 67%, and audiences like it just a little better at 69%. Tomatoes’ “critics consensus” tells us “Trumbo serves as an honorable and well-acted tribute to a brilliant writer’s principled stand, even if it doesn’t quite achieve the greatness of its subject’s own classic screenplays.” Their view: its workman like, but not as good as Trumbo’s own work.

Me, I saw it as a complete success, beautifully costumed by Daniel Orlandi, tightly written by John McNamara, solidly directed by Jay Roach, and brilliantly acted by, well, I liked everyone. While it ran two hours and four minutes, I never felt it drag. The film held my attention all the way. Bryan Cranston was exquisite as the bon vivant and sometimes communist who risked it all in a stand for freedom of speech, and then suffered the consequences with a prison sentence followed by being black listed. How he both survived and undermined the black list was delightful.

As a counter point through this was the weight this put on his family. Where if there was anything of an off note, I found how the family pretty nearly completely stood with him all the way through, and only the smallest outbursts during the hardest parts, just a little too Ozzie and Harriet. Although who knows? Looking the family up after the movie it seems they really have all stood together through it all, and beyond.

Special shout outs to Helen Mirren playing a deliciously dastardly Hedda Hopper, Diane Lane as Trumbo’s spouse Cleo, Lous C. K. as Arlen Hird, and the amazing scene stealer John Goodman as schlock movie producer Frank King. With biopics how people play well known figures is always a complex decision. And I can’t say who I liked best in that cast of the familiar recast, Michael Stuhlbarg as the morally compromised Edward G Robinson, David James Elliott as the very clear on where he stood John Wayne, and Dean O’Gorman’s Kirk Douglas and Christian Berkel as Otto Preminger who together finally broke the back of the blacklist for reasons that were not entirely predicated on doing the right thing.

Me, I particularly liked the moral ambiguity, where few are played as complete villains, and none as unvarnished heroes. Sort of like real life.

Bottom line, it’s a fine movie. When the dust settles I’ll be surprised if there aren’t any number of Oscar nominations for this film and the people who made it and acted in it.

I left it feeling right sometimes triumphs.

And these days that’s really good.