Trumbo – Film Review by Pat V.

Director: Jay Roach
Writers: John McNamara, Bruce Cook (book)
Stars: Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren

Jay Roach, best known for Austin Power and Meet the Parents, has taken on a more serious topic in his latest film, a biopic of Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood 10, blacklisted and imprisoned in 1950 for his Communist views and for refusing to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. While his film is not as hard hitting as George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck or as moving as Woody Allen’s The Front it captures clearly the hysteria and paranoia of McCarthy’s America of the 1950s and is all the more relevant today when we witness the demonising of another “Un-American” group, the Muslims, by Donald Trump and his supporters.

Dalton Trumbo is superbly played by Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and is shown here warts and all, an obsessive man who is willing to sacrifice everything for his principles. His inflexibility and sense of personal morality are at once his strength and his weakness and the effects are felt not only by himself but by all those around him. Arlan Hird, one of his communist comrades (strongly played by Louis C. K.) complains “Do you have to say everything like it’s going to be chiselled into rock?” and that unwavering sense of certainty causes great hardship for Trumbo’s wife and children.

Diane Lane who plays his wife, Cleo, gives a restrained and touching performance but perhaps the most memorable scenes are those with Helen Mirren who plays the celebrity gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper. Hopper is portrayed as a vicious and scheming virago who exerts real power behind the scenes at every level in Hollywood. A lifelong Republican and virulent anti-Communist, she embarks on a personal crusade to destroy Trumbo. Mirren’s portrayal is always riveting and she richly deserves the Golden Globe nomination for her role. The final shot where we see her in 1960, as the world she dominated crumbles around her, is one of the highlights of the film.

Other powerful performances are given by Michael Stuhlbarg who plays Edward G Robinson, a longtime friend of Trumbo’s, who lacks his strength and crumbles under pressure and David James Elliott as John Wayne whose encounter with Trumbo at an anti-Communist rally raises the biggest laugh of the movie.

The facts of Trumbo’s life are stranger than any fiction and the list of films he scripted (The Brave One, Roman Holiday, Exodus, Papillon etc) rank him among Hollywood’s greatest writers. His other great success was Spartacus, the story of an outcast who stood up against the might of the Roman Empire, and the parallels with his own situation are underlined in the film.

The period newsreels remind us of the cruelty and destructive power of McCarthy’s America, a fact that is sometimes glossed over by Roche’s lush cinematography and by Cranston’s charm. However, while the film may sometimes punch below its weight it is always interesting. Dalton Trumbo’s story deserves to be better known – if only as a reminder of the destructive capacity of prejudice allied to influence in society – and Jay Roach delivers a film that is entertaining and destined for success.