Trumbo

Perhaps America’s most shameful period remains the Red Scare years of the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy stoked up the nation’s paranoia about a Communist invasion. The wholly unAmerican House UnAmerican Activities Committee persecuted, blacklisted, jailed, and ruined the careers, families and lives of many good intelligent people. They declared them traitors not because of anything they did but because of what they thought, in effect, their rather idealistic vision of what human society might be. Given the evidence, the issues and the total abdication of American values, that may well remain America’s most shameful period — though the Republican nomination and upcoming election may challenge for the title. 

For all its historical accuracy and its championship of free thought and expression, Trumbo remains a compromised, mushy American film. A European-style art film it ain’t.  Director Jay Roach makes a considerable advance on his work with Austin Powers and the Fokkers but he’s not there yet. 

The film succeeds in reliving the period’s paranoia and in chronicling the terrible cost to American liberals when the government outlawed free thought. We get justified exposures of such figures as right-wing gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, the cowardly Hollywood producers, the principled turncoats like Edward G. Robinson and the odd hero like Kirk Douglas. Douglas offers the blacklisted Trumbo a screen credit on Spartacus but only after he’s tempted to fire the pariah. 

An acrid scene between Louis B. Mayer and Hopper exposes the culture’s bedrock antisemitism — which the Jewish moguls were discretely reluctant to confront on or off screen. 

Bryan Cranston plays Trumbo as a collection of mannerisms and eloquence. (Haven’t seen so much smoking in ages!) Both the character and the performer are impressive, as is the documentary postscript of the real Trumbo. He’s as close to a saint as America has coughed up in recent years. In an attempt to preserve his humanity, the film gives us too conventional an image of US family life, but for Dad’s bullying idealism and megalomania. Briefly mute the politics and this is another episode of Father Knows Best (and Mom just stands by her man).

Initially this film is about 1950s American paranoia, its suspension of its citizens’ traditional rights and values, the politicized and split Supreme Court, and the danger of an foreign threat. But it’s also about America today. A savage power bent upon global domination — Communism, radical Islam — plus ca change…. the meme shows. 

Ultimately this film falls far short of European art cinema and remains commercial American. In order to provide a ending it sacrifices historic complexity. We leave cheered at our hero’s perseverance and success. Hollywood justice was done when he was finally recognized for his two Oscars and was openly credited in major films again. 

And yes, we’re reminded of the good peoples’ suffering and losses and the shameful participation of Nixon and Reagan. (Hilary Clinton’s early involvement in Senator McCarthy’s project is discreetly omitted.) It mentions the issue of fashion: screenwriters who extolled Russia when it was our ally against Hitler were later persecuted for that work when Russia turned foe.

But the film still simplifies the issue. It represents Trumbo’s “communism” at its purest, as in his daughter’s instinct to share her theoretical favourite sandwich with a lunchless kid. What’s missing is the Left’s willful blindness to the blatant horrors of Stalinism. 1950s Communism was  far different from the liberals’ original socialist ideals. The film gives no sense that its freethinking heroes may have been wrong. When actor Robinson tells HUAC he was duped it’s not about the Russians’ corruption and brutalizing of the socialist ideal but about his buddies meeting at his house — where the only plotting was not to bring down America but to protect their constitutional rights. The liberals here are whitewashed, made more valiant, innocent and intelligent than Lenin’s sobriquet for them, “useful idiots.” This omission weakens the film’s message for our present rationalizers and supporters of terrorism.

What’s also missing here is nuance. It should be possible to be a Communist insofar as it rejects the current monstrosities of capitalism. It should be possible to defend the speech and thought of someone as wrong-headed as a 1950s Communist without agreeing with him. It should be possible to think beyond knee-jerk labels. 

So, too, today, it should be possible to name ISIS as one of the radical forms of terrorist Islam without rejecting the entire religion. And to confront ISIS without being willfully blind to its Islamic roots and claims. It should be possible to learn from the European example to be vigilant in evaluating Syrian refugee applicants without being immediately targeted as racist. Nor should the entire Syrian refugee body be barred because of the activity of some, however many. To avoid opposite extremities we need nuance. This film missed the chance to demonstrate that.

This Trumbo finally succeeds because of two antithetical film-makers. Otto Preminger is the Teutonic martinet who hires Trumbo to write Exodus with the promise of a full screen credit.  John Goodman plays a trash producer who hires the blacklisted writers to churn out his schlock. High culture, low culture, both these characters present an effective humanity and principle based on pragmatism, not blinded by a smug ideal.
      The two key Trumbo films are also emblematic. Exodus depicted the birth of the Jewish state after centuries of the uprooted Jews facing global persecution. Spartacus is the lowborn slave who leads a populist rebellion against the Roman Empire. Clearly Trumbo is presented as the slave who revolted against the repressive culture and led bis people back to the promised land — credits on major flicks.