Armageddon Time

Armageddon Time

VERDICT: An immersive portrait of writer-director James Gray’s family in 1980s Queens, N.Y. is woven around the young protag’s dawning social consciousness.

With the intensely personal Armageddon Time, James Gray merits the title “the poet of Queens”, taking the borough into new dimensions compared to its usual casting as a run-down, mobster-ridden appendage of New York. Here it is the locus of young Paul Graff’s burgeoning awareness of what it means to be Jewish in 1980 in America — and what it means to be Black, like his best buddy Johnny. Set on the cusp between Jimmy Carter’s presidency and Ronald Reagan’s, in an age when Americans quaked at the threat of imminent nuclear war with Russia and when the risk of world-wide “Armageddon” was often invoked (it’s back again, of course), this small-scale, closely observed story is one of Gray’s very best. Its intimacy and diaristic feeling may not be the stuff mass audiences are made of (they are probably bigger fans of The Lost City of Z and Ad Astra, the director’s outsized fantasies set in jungles and outer space), and the episodic structure of the screenplay demands the viewer’s patience, particularly in the drawn-out ending. But with Anne Hathaway and Anthony Hopkins stealing the screen in standout performances as Paul’s mother and grandfather, curiosity should grow select audiences around this Focus Features release, which got a big send-off in Cannes competition.

The story’s autobiographical feeling is no accident – Gray has said he aimed to be as sincere and truthful as possible in telling his own family story and Paul, played as delightfully spacey by Banks Repeta, is unambiguously his stand-in. Self-reference permeates every detail of the film, from the well-lived-in décor of a middle-class home on a leafy, quiet street to the snarling, shouting, screaming quarrels that break out around the dinner table, where Paul’s parents Esther (Hathaway) and Irving (a fine Jeremy Strong) and big brother (Ryan Sell) are frequently joined by the older generation. Foremost is grandpa Aaron Rabinowitz, the family’s emotional and moral center, who is getting on in years. Anthony Hopkins is a rather surprising casting choice, but he fully sinks into the role, to the point where it’s hard to imagine a New York actor (for example) bringing such submerged personality and off-the-cuff wisdom to the part. His affection and concern for Paul blooms in a key scene set in a big empty park, where he delivers moral advice with the force of a Biblical prophet, and with great love. As the two joyfully shoot off a toy rocket together (this is the space age), Paul’s mother remains in the car and looks on from a distance, consumed by her own sorrows.

Back home, family life is a tinderbox fraught with tension, and all it takes is a provocative insult or two from Paul and Ted to make it explode. Gray effortlessly captures that familiar vicious mechanism of teenagers pushing their parents to the limit, waiting for Dad’s ferocious temper to ignite and punishment to arrive. In one scene, it’s shockingly corporal; in another, after Paul is caught smoking pot in the school bathroom, it’s the psychological torture of being uprooted from public school and his one friend Johnny; finally, after the worst happens, there is no punishment at all, just a sickening understanding that his father is human and feels like a failure reaching for the elusive American Dream. Yet after each grueling comeuppance, the family reunites with some loving gesture or sign that the trouble has blown over and Paul is forgiven.

Banks Repeta is wonderfully cast as 6th-grader Paul, sporting a wiry delicacy that sets him apart from his peers and a wide-eyed openness to life that often gets him into trouble. His precocious artistic talent is ignored by the obtuse adults guiding him, from his boorish public school teacher Mr. Turteltaub a.k.a. Turkey (a funny Andrew Polk) to the equally closed minds of the high-class educators at Forest Manor, the pretentious private school he ends up in, thanks to his grandparents’ savings. His outcast status in school, abetted by continual disobedience and misbehavior, makes him the natural friend of the rebel Johnny (Jaylin Webb), the only Black student in his class.

Turkey’s discrimination against Johnny and his open dislike of the intelligent, belligerent boy holds a mirror to a much larger swathe of society that includes most members of Paul’s liberal, Democratic-voting family. Even though they use the word Black instead of something else, his parents don’t want him to associate with Johnny, especially after the pot episode, much less bring him to their house. Jaylin Webb’s well-spoken Johnny, who lives with an ailing grandma, dreams of running away to Florida and becoming an astronaut at NASA.  There is something in his face and determination that recalls Muhammad Ali, whose photo plays an interesting role in delineating the boys’ loyalties.

But the sad fact is that the much-touted American Dream, that anyone can become anything they want, doesn’t apply to Blacks and Hispanics. (That realization is a moral turning point for both boys.) And, at least for Paul’s Jewish parents, it will apply to their offspring only if they can “blend in” and find “a good seat at the table”. It is an idea created for the elite students of Forest Manor, where Paul and his brother disguise their Jewishness behind the name Graff, and where Queens’ billionaire royalty Fred Trump and Maryanne Trump (Jessica Chastain in a surprise cameo) come to donate and lecture, in some pretty chilling scenes that must be drawn from Gray’s own memories.

In the end it is the skillful interweaving of the private and the social that gives Armageddon Time its power, aided by excellent tech work that keeps itself largely in the background. Darius Khondji’s immersive lighting blends with Happy Massee’s period production design in an extremely natural way (in reality the house looks like it was recreated with original pieces from Gray’s family home in Flushing, and the cinematography strives for mood, not beautification.) More noticeable is the selection of period songs cagily mixed with Mozart, Bach and Ravel.

Director, screenplay: James Gray
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, Jaylin Webb, Ryan Sell, Tovah Feldshuh, John Diehl, Andrew Polk, Jessica Chastain
Producers: Anthony Katagas, Marc Butan, Rodrigo Teixeira
Cinematography: Darius Khondji

Editing: Scott Morris
Production design: Happy Massee
Costume design: Madeline Weeks
Music: Christopher Spelman
Production companies: Mad River Pictures, Keep Your Head in association with Spacemaker Productions
World Sales: Focus Features
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
In English
105 minutes