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| Courtesy of Focus Features |
Set during a particular period in 1980 Queens, New York
City, the film follows a twelve-year-old Jewish-American lad Paul Graff (Banks
Repeta) who sparks a friendship with a backtalking African-American student
named Johnny (Jaylin Webb) who we later learn was held back a year. Despite both classmates being troublemakers,
Johnny takes a harder fall due to his ethnicity which only enhances their bond
and mutual love for music and art.
However when their playing hooky and bathroom joint passing lands them
in more serious trouble, Paul’s stern Jewish family consisting of his parents
Esther (Anne Hathaway) and Irving (Jeremy Strong) and his Ukrainian grandfather
Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins) intervene by changing schools and
neighborhoods, putting a damper on Paul and Johnny’s friendship.
A self-portrait about guilt, familial generational bonds and
pursuit of the American Dream at the expense of your own ideological moral
compass, James Gray’s subtly seismic drama is a snapshot of a particular period of time
where the currents and rules of the world had more to do with decision making
than people interacting on personal levels.
While ostensibly a drama about racism, the film for Gray seems to be an
apologetic admission of complicity with those very systems and class divisions that
helped get him where he is today. A smalltime
personal drama with potentially global implications touching on international
histories, longstanding prejudices and the unlikely bond between the privileged
and the impoverished, Armageddon Time seems minimalist in appearance and
formality but has a quiet grandiosity to the sphere lived in by these
characters.
Aided by an understated and occasional original score by
Gray stalwart Christopher Spelman and somber, dimly lit brownish cinematography
by legendary cameraman Darius Khondji, Armageddon Time visually and
sonically transports us back into a pivotal period in American history with
austere elegance without ever veering into bombast. Both elements in this Gray effort are pitch
perfect and represent a tight-knit working relationship between director,
cinematographer and composer.
As an
ensemble acting piece, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong and Anthony Hopkins all
soar if not command the forces of nature that govern the events of this
picture. Not one performer missteps with
key scenes of soliloquy acted with passion without overplaying. Special attention should be devoted to the
film’s child actors Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb who hoist much of the dramatic
and sociopolitical weight on their young shoulders. All around from a technical and performative
front, Armageddon Time is pitch perfect.
An autocritique as social critique which is a rare creature
in American media and one which seems to come from the heart of its
writer-director, James Gray’s newest cinematic endeavor is a complex
examination of systemic racism, patriarchy and being born into privilege that
is more interested in posing the talking points as questions than seeking
answers. Mostly its about how ingrained
these things are in our life that we inevitably look back with some measure of
shame while seeking not to repeat the mistakes of our past.
Part of the film’s power stems from the
refusal to tie everything up neatly in a bow. Where other dramas tackling these subjects would have things work to achieve a satisfactory end, Armageddon Time plays like a collection of memories we feel guilty about reflecting upon. Loose ends are left open and dramatic conflicts involving the two minors
and higher powers navigating the dissolution of their friendship remain
unresolved, making Gray’s cinematic self portrait a confessional and reckoning
with his own past which clearly still haunts him to this day.
--Andrew Kotwicki
