Donald Trump tried to ban The Apprentice, was it worth the fuss?

By Jared Richards of the ABC

The Apprentice's title might be a nod to the reality show that propelled Donald Trump to national infamy but the film itself - an unsanctioned portrait tracing the 45th US president's emergence as a real estate mogul in the 1970s and 1980s - takes us beyond public image and into an uncanny world of shifting identities.

From certain angles and in particular scenes, Sebastian Stan pulls off a remarkable impression, especially whenever he adopts a chin-jut, clenched jaw or another of Trump's go-to expressions and mannerisms.

Elsewhere, Stan barely resembles the man at all. The voice is more timid than we imagine, but that's more because Trump didn't always sound like Trump - he grew into that cadence and tone. The illusion continually breaks. It's disorientating, and it's on purpose.

The Apprentice isn't aspiring to be formulaic Best Actor Oscar-bait, nor is it settling for a careful, detached character study, and that's likely why director Ali Abassi - an Iranian-Danish genre filmmaker attracted to darkness (trafficking folk horror Border, violent thriller Holy Spider) - has bristled at critics describing it as a biopic.

Though repeatedly called "an American horror story" in marketing material, this is a classical affair: the film's screenwriter (and Vanity Fair political journalist) Gabriel Sherman calls it "a Frankenstein origin story" in which a monster grows beyond its maker's control. The Apprentice's mad mentor is notorious prosecutor and political fixer Roy Cohn, played by Succession's Jeremy Strong.

In his 20s, Cohn became Joseph McCarthy's right-hand prosecutor during the Red Scare, after successfully advocating the death penalty for Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Like FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, he was also a queer man who ruthlessly persecuted other queer people during the mid-century Lavender Scare, firing federal employees believed to be gay and coercing others into subservience.

Cohn, as played by Strong, lives with insecurity at the fore. His attempts to embody confidence, via an always-craning neck and leathery skin from his in-house spray tan bed, resemble a snapping turtle permanently extended, always having just attacked.

Trump first approaches Cohn in a bar in the late 1970s, eager to get his legal counsel after Trump Snr's (Martin Donovan) real estate empire is accused by the government of racial discrimination.

Despite Trump's rough edges, Cohn sees something in him. Looks, initially: He asks Trump if he "f***s a lot of women", relishing the idea of his understudy as the straight stud he could never be. Maybe the 6'3 Trump could achieve heights of power Cohn couldn't, the perfect test subject for his fail-safe three rules of business.

After their mentorship is established in the film, and the plot kicks into gear, it's easy to be swept up in the sadistic joy of Trump finding his power: He develops Trump Hotel and the Trump Plaza casino through sheer will alone, strong-arming his way through regulations, mob run-ins and debts. He learns he can talk things into existence, and falls in love with the sound of his own voice.

But it's Ivana (Maria Bakalova) who appears as his toughest conquest, a young Czech woman at first reluctant to be his trophy wife. The rejection renders him a clumsy lovesick man desperate to win her heart. It almost feels twee, though that illusion is swiftly shattered post-marriage as he moves into rule one: Attack, attack, attack, belittling her looks, purpose and core.

Unfortunately, Bakalova - deservedly Oscar-nominated for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm - isn't given much to do in the film, as The Apprentice favours Trump's art of the deal over domestic drama. Their three children suddenly just appear in the backdrop, and potentially potent scenes with his brother Fred (Charlie Carrick), who died in 1981 due to alcoholism, lack energy as if included out of obligation rather than interest.

But, given we've all read and seen so much about Trump, it's his relationship with Cohn that offers the least-trod ground. Besides, the tension underpinning their relationship is The Apprentice's most fascinating element.

Trump, in the film, is repulsed by Cohn's sexuality but in awe of his power, as this older, leathery man can bed any Adonis and avoid high-society ostracism for his hedonism. That is until Cohn develops AIDS. Then even his mentee, a known germaphobe, shuts him out, turning those three fail-safe rules against him.

It's in these scenes that Strong steals the film, the eleventh-hour rejection recasting Cohn as a pitiable figure. There's no moment of repentance written for cheap empathy, either: It simply hurts to watch a man flamed by hatred, self or otherwise, lose his fire.

But does empathy extend to Trump? There are certainly moments of The Apprentice where it's easy to be mesmerised by Trump's business bravado, especially early on. There's a knowing illusion of naivety in the 1970s section, all warm sunsets and film grain, as Stan plays Trump as an awkward everyman just trying to impress his dad.

Might Trump like The Apprentice?

Team Trump certainly isn't happy with the film, threatening to sue and attempting to prevent its distribution after its Cannes premiere in May. Abassi offered to show the former US president the film, telling press it's possible Trump might even like it.

He might like the casting of Hollywood-handsome Stan in his likeness, but otherwise, it's easy to imagine him live-Truth-Social posting through it with fury. And no, not just for its depiction of his shady business dealings or his alleged 1989 rape of his first wife Ivana Trump (an allegation she later recanted as metaphorical). These both can be - and have been - dismissed as fake news and election interference by Hollywood. Many such cases!

Instead, The Apprentice hits him where it hurts - aesthetically. That's not to say this is a compilation of circa 2016 tweets about his orange tan or hairline. (Though you might feel scenes detailing Trump's alleged 1989 liposuction and scalp-reduction surgery are only there to humiliate him. He certainly won't like those, having denied ever having plastic surgery. But then again, showing Trump's scalp being stapled in all its gory glory renders his vanity pathetic and deranged, which is another way to say deeply human.)

Abassi never once depicts Trump's wealthy excesses or displays of raw power - whether that be an office with a gold ceiling or a gigantic fountain at Trump Tower - as visually impressive.

Instead, sequences play out in handycam footage, which lends a fitting jitteriness to things. At times, that shooting approach feels more Arrested Development than Blair Witch, though anxiety seeps in as the story enters the 80s. There, film stock gives way to a decade-appropriate VHS filter, with colour lines and fuzz fading in and out, eerily distorting Trump's empire. It's a similar effect to when the camera shifts angles and Trump is now very clearly Sebastian Stan: The magic vanishes.

Watching The Apprentice, you're constantly aware you're watching The Apprentice, that this is just a story being told about a master of selling stories. This film, like the countless other excavations of Trump's past, doesn't get to the heart of the man. But it does reveal the chasm between the persona and the real person, a depth that we only get a sense of by its endless echo, Trump's voice louder and louder.

This story first appeared on [www.abc.net.au ABC]