Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

It takes a while for what Armageddon Time is really about to sink in. It’s so subtle, it’s easy to imagine many viewers missing it. But in the end, it’s quite clear: this is the story of a marginalized group using recently acquired privilege to its own advantage. “Survival of the fittest” among competing communities, you might say. On the surface it’s just about one family—a deeply autobiographical reflection of writer-director James Gray’s childhood—but with far broader implications.

Every so often, a movie comes along as a period piece that so piercingly alludes to the present day, it’s eerie. The setting is in 1980, during the presidential election that brought us the Reagan administration. There’s a scene late in the film when the family is watching Reagan’s landslide victory on the news, and the young protagonist’s father, Irving, says, “Morons. From sea to shining sea, morons!” Leaving the movie, I checked Twitter, and came upon this: Deeply depressing that an actual election issue this year is that the absolute stupidest people in the world sincerely believe that school kids are shitting in litter boxes and a decent number of those idiots are running for office. The only way you can not see a connection here is if you’re not paying attention.

It’s always tricky when a movie’s plot deals significantly with Black people (or, in this case, one Black person) and yet the story centers the White people and how they are affected by the Black friend, or neighbor, or whatever. The trick in the case of Armageddon Time is that there are now “White saviors” or “magical Negros.” Instead, we see a Jewish American family, the grandfather (played valiantly by Anthony Hopkins), completely oblivious to the privilege of their Whiteness in America. They have very typical middle-class White America problems and concerns, by which they are entirely preoccupied. Only Grandpa Rabinowitz, whose mother witnessed the murder of both her parents when she was just a teenager, has any real concept of standing up for the marginalized.

Grandpa tells his grandson, Paul (a stellar Banks Repeta), stories of their family’s past, asserting that it should not be forgotten. And yet, perhaps just because of separate degrees of severity, even Grandpa has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the type of people running the private school he finally suggests to his daughter and son-in-law that they send him to, which is bank rolled by the Trump family. When Paul attends this school for the first time, he meets Fred Trump (Donald’s father) in the hallway; we see him in a few different scenes. That same day, Paul attends an assembly in which Jessica Chastain makes a single, but deeply memorable appearance as Maryanne Trump (Donald’s sister).

Maryanne gives a stern lecture on success, and how she got where she was without ever once getting “ a handout.” All I could think about—and this is the point—is how little credence she clearly gave to having been born into a wealthy family. And whether Paul realizes it or not, he’s got a similar leg up just by getting into this private school, which his parents could never afford, but the tuition for which is being paid for by his hard-working, long-saving grandparents, whose sole intent is to give Paul the opportunities they didn’t have. That’s the essence of what matters to them, far more than what kind of people they’re sending him to be educated by.

And this is where we come to Paul’s friend, Johnny (Jaylin Webb, also excellent), the troublemaking classmate with whom we see Paul become friends with while still in public school over the course of the first half of the film. Trailers make it seem as though this relationship is more like a supblot, but this is really what the entire movie comes down to. Paul takes his cues from Johnny, engages in similar antics of his own, and immediately discovers how teachers, while strict, are quicker to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to assume the worst of Johnny—even assume Johnny is the culprit when in fact it’s Paul. With the exception of his grandpa, Paul’s parents (played by Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, both of them blending into their roles stunningly well) also assume the worst of Johnny, “the Black kid.” The family on the whole displays a casual racism that it’s easy for White people to forget permeates throughout this country, now as then. Like most such people, they are convinced they aren’t racist, even as they make wild assumptions about a young boy’s circumstances and potential influence.

Ultimately, Armageddon Time is about privilege, and how context can change it—both to someone’s detriment, or in the case of the Graff family (noting that “Graff” is changed from “Rabinowitz” a generation back—to make them less of a target), to their benefit. Unsurprisingly, Johnny displays a deep understanding of these nuances far earlier than anyone in the Graff family does. They are subtle enough in James Gray’s very telling of this story that I do wonder to what extent viewers will even get it. If you know to look for these subtleties, however, they are unmistakable.

It’s too bad the degree to which some people have demonized the very term “privilege,” and willfully misunderstood its true meaning—which, again, is nuanced. I almost hesitated even to use the word here, given the way people shut down at the very sound of it. No one in this movie utters the word, which actually makes it better, not to mention more realistic, since 1980 was long before it became the buzz word it is now. But that is absolutely what this movie is about. We know who is going to move forward with a better life by the end of the movie, and yet it’s difficult to feel particularly good about any single character’s future. You might say that Armageddon Time is a microcosm of the American story over the past forty years, a story about getting ahead at the expense of others, feeling temporarily guilty about it, and then forging ahead anyway. It’s safe to say this is not a feel-good movie, but it is provocative in all the right ways.

Overall: A-