Oscar Nominees That Tell the Story of Trump’s America

Given the threat of political retribution, we are bound to see some caution in Hollywood, writes Murali Kamma.

These movies were made before the 2024 election. So, how are filmmakers responding to Trump 2.0, whose conservatism and reactionary zeal is being felt everywhere, including cultural spaces?

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

Emergency, the long-delayed biopic featuring Kangana Ranaut as Indira Gandhi, was a flop, and we are yet to see a successful movie based on the life of Narendra Modi (a 2019 film starring Vivek Oberoi was dismissed as hagiography). There is, however, an insightful 2024 film – Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice – that captures the rise of a young Donald J Trump in New York City.

The news in the US now is bleak, with some calling the situation an emergency. Authoritarianism appears to be pulling us into a dark pit from which we may not emerge anytime soon. But what’s good about The Apprentice and the other films mentioned here is that they’re all entertaining without being preachy. At times, they can be unexpectedly enlightening.

These movies were made before the 2024 election. So, how are filmmakers responding to Trump 2.0, whose conservatism and reactionary zeal is being felt everywhere, including cultural spaces?

Will they capitulate, as the tech barons and a few media companies did? Hopefully not. Movie professionals usually have a liberal, progressive outlook, and they may resist any coercion.

Nevertheless, Trump’s animus is real.

Given the threat of lawsuits, funding cuts, tariffs, and political retribution, we are bound to see some caution in Hollywood. And the burden of making bold, thought-provoking films that take a critical look at the MAGA agenda may fall on the shoulders of smaller players.

Big studios and corporations, sensing opportunity and fearing retaliation, seem eager to cosy up to Trump. Like several leaders of other nations, they know that the right formula for dealing with the dealmaker is to be transactional and avoid stepping on his toes.

The Power of Independent Cinema in Troubled Times

Foreign and independent film production companies have already stepped into the void left by the big studios. In fact, the two most-nominated movies for the 97th Academy Awards wouldn’t have been made without them.

Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, a musical crime thriller that’s also a trans story, leads the pack with 13 nominations. Even more than the theme, what makes the film's frontrunner status noteworthy is that it’s in Spanish. 

The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s much-lauded epic, received 10 Oscar nominations. At three and a half hours, including a 15-minute intermission, it seems too long for today’s theatre audiences. And yet, it’s such an aural and visual treat, enhanced by the VistaVision format developed in the 1950s, that most movie lovers, even in the age of streaming, would have no problem sitting through it. The acting is persuasive, and the period detail only adds to the nostalgic experience.

I found its timeliness striking. It’s true that the film, involving a distinguished if fictional Jewish architect, takes place in mid-20th-century America. Still, his displacement and harrowing immigrant journey has an unmistakable contemporary resonance. As the film opens, László Toth (played by Adrien Brody, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor), a European refugee fleeing the madness of the Second World War, is in the belly of a ship ploughing through the ocean.

When it enters New York Harbor, he catches a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, bringing cheers and  smiles. But it feels ominous because the chaos inside gives him an upside-down view, as if the imaginary “Welcome to America” sign that the statue represents has been inverted. 

Oddly enough, it reminded me of an image that a friend shared on social media. It shows Lady Liberty holding two suitcases as she flees Ellis Island, and the caption reads: “Leaving before she gets deported.”

Corbet, who also co-wrote The Brutalist, has said, “The film is about immigration, full stop.” It’s not easy to sum up this lengthy movie in a paragraph. One has to watch it. As Toth says, “Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?”

Toth’s dispossession, alienation, and humiliation also lead to an inversion—a knowing inversion of a popular saying. At the first Venice Biennale of Architecture, where Toth’s work is celebrated, his niece speaks on his behalf.

He is there as well, but because of a drug addiction that began on the ship, he is incapacitated, even mute, and confined to a wheelchair. Quoting her uncle on what’s important, she ends her speech with the words “It’s not the journey, it’s the destination.”

Fiction as a Mirror to Political Reality

The Apprentice, too, is about the destination. Backed by terrific performances—Sebastian Stan, as the young Trump, and Jeremy Strong, as the attorney Roy Cohn, both earned Oscar nomination—it’s a fast-moving biopic that takes one back to the turbulent New York of the 1970s and ’80s. A disclosure acknowledges the use of creative license. The film’s jazzy, energetic style reflects the unruly rhythms of the city and the brash restlessness of an ambitious and grasping real estate tycoon.

Trump’s transformation under the malign influence of Cohn is astonishing to behold.

Tellingly, it’s a discrimination lawsuit from Black tenants that jump-starts their relationship, turning Trump into the take-no-prisoners operator that we’re familiar with now. After initial qualms, he embraces Cohn’s three rules:

1. Attack, attack, attack.

2. Admit nothing and deny everything.

3. No matter what happens, claim victory and never admit defeat.

There is more, if we want to understand Trump and his impact, but these concise principles do tell us a lot about the man who 'loves' to do deals.

“You have to be willing to do anything to anyone to win,” Cohn says — a chilling mantra whose echoes are all too obvious these days. Listening to Trump and Elon Musk, as they issue their head-spinning bulletins and diktats, I’m reminded of this quote from Cohn: “You create your own reality. Truth is a malleable thing.”

The well-written script is strewn with other highly quotable nuggets.

• “I say if you’re indicted, you’re invited.”

• “Play the man, not the ball.”

• “This is a nation of men, not laws.”

• “If somebody comes after you with a knife, you shoot ’em back with a bazooka.”

The last line – said by Trump to Tony Schwartz, the journalist he hired to ghostwrite The Art of the Deal – reminded me why Democrats can often seem helpless when they face Republicans in the do-or-die arena of American politics. You cannot bring a knife to a gun battle, it's been said. 

It's not just recent movies that capture this extraordinary period. Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, which wasn’t a hit when it came out in the 1950s, seems prescient now. A handsome, charismatic hayseed (played by Andy Griffith), riding on a wave of publicity unleashed by television and media hype, becomes a powerful celebrity. He is a proto-Trump.

The film may appear tame by today’s standards, but the contemporary relevance is still remarkable.

For other older movies in the same vein, one could name the following, among others: Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1940s); Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1960s); Hal Ashby’s Being There (1970s); David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone (1980s); and Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog (1990s). 

Coming back to The Apprentice, in a scene set in Aspen, Colorado, Ivana (Trump’s first wife) has finally agreed to date him. During their conversation, he tells her about a lesson that his father – rather than Roy Cohn – taught him. There are two types of people in life: Killers and losers.

“It’s not good to be a killer, no?” Ivana says, shocked. Trump disagrees. His response is short and blunt. “Killer means winner.”

(Murali Kamma is a managing editor and writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. This is an opinion article, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)