Lately, directors have taken to remembering his life. This year we will see ‘The Fabelmans’, but before Spielberg there was Kenneth Branagh with ‘Belfast’, Alfonso Cuarón with ‘Roma’ or Lee Isac Chung with ‘Minari’. The last to arrive at the party is James Gray, but it seems that he has done so without remembering that in a film we are not going to feel compassion for a character because the soundtrack or the context tells us to: also, this has to be minimally personable, charismatic, or at least interesting. The protagonist of ‘Armageddon time’ is not, but the film thinks so…for two long hours.
Child please stop
It was one of the most anticipated movies of the year.: An autobiography of James Gray (‘Ad Astra’, ‘Z: The Lost City’) starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Hathaway couldn’t go wrong. It had all the ingredients to be on every year-end list. And yet, Gray has been determined to make Paul, the boy who stars in ‘Armageddon Time’, have no redemption.
There is a scene, shortly after the start of the film, that encapsulates what I am saying well: at a family dinner, we see how the mother has spent hours preparing fish for the whole family. Paul asks why they don’t order dumplings at the Chinese restaurant And that’s it, something to which her mother replies that she has been cooking for hours and that she eats the fish. In the middle of dinner, between the rows and the revelry, Paul gets up, picks up the phone and asks for the Chinese restaurant before his parents warn him not to do it and Hathaway cries inconsolably. The consequences? Absolutely none. For some reason, the movie sees it as a kid’s prank who during the movie stars in a teenage ‘Breaking Bad’, just without the charisma of Walter White.
‘Armageddon time’ is a frankly strange film, in which redemption for a whimsical and creaky character never comes: always, at all times, he has an out of place comment, a criminal idea, a phrase that is not very empathetic or a way of blaming a friend that makes his sentimental scenes produce nothing more than apathy in the audience. No one asks that all characters be morally correct, but you can’t ask the viewer to cheer up a child who constantly makes life miserable for his family. He, and he alone, is what makes James Gray’s movie never get off the ground, despite being surrounded by a ton of good ideas.
The toy rocket
There were two good stories in ‘Armageddon time’ that Gray has failed to tell. The first, the relationship between a grandfather absolutely blind to the excesses of his grandson, loving: the only two people in the world who understand each other. The best scene in the film is carried out by Anthony Hopkins, as always, magnificent (no one expected less), and Paul, trying to make a toy rocket fly. Most of the lines (we’ll talk about this later) are sensibly and sensitively chosen, and the staging is fabulous: if the whole movie had the subtlety of this plotanother rooster would crow.
The second is the one that scratches a little more, but without reaching the bottom: systemic racism in late 1980s brooklyn, in which skin color was judged differently and children of different races were not allowed to play together. However, the film never stops exploring this problem. Instead of digging and investigating the reasons, injustices and social change, what he does is turn up the dirt and show it, without going beyond saying “Racism existed.” He has some very powerful moments (his resignation to jail as top representative) but overall, his analysis of middle-class privilege and racism forty years ago it stays on the surface.
Good intentions don’t make a good movie., and American nostalgia does not connect with ours in any way, nor does it manage to make ‘Armageddon Time’ soar. Yes, of course, it is not a horrible or pernicious movie, but everything that counts has already been told before (and better): the film does not feel alive, it does not evolve and its climax is decidedly disappointing. So is there redemption?
Oh, what nostalgia, the 80s
In the end, the most interesting thing about the film is to see James Gray looking at the past and affirming that if he has gotten where he is, it is largely due to privilege and by stepping on heads They were more innocent than him. This mea culpa translates into wildly stilted dialogue: In the otherwise incredible scene in the park, the boy says that sometimes kids at school say things about black kids. “What do you do when that happens?” Hopkins’ character asks. “Obviously nothing,” replies the boy. As a viewer, you know that catharsis is about to arrive. “And you think that’s smart?”, inquires his grandfather again before releasing a talk about the power of words. Yes, in the mouth of Anthony Hopkins even the shopping list would be well interpreted, but the script is obvious, easy, soft and seen a thousand times. It is impossible to convince like that.
But ‘Armageddon time’ also has its moments of enjoyment, although, like everything during its footage, comes in little unconnected pills. Jessica Chastain and John Diehl giving motivational messages to tomorrow’s leaders as Donald Trump’s sister and father, Jeremy Strong in a very restrained but very emotional scene talking to their children about their father-in-law, the despair of Anne Hathaway lost in her Broken middle-class fantasy… Gray’s film has its moments, but the main plot is loud and not vibrant enough enough to make them stand out from the general lukewarm tone.
‘Armageddon time’ was a better idea than a script, and a better script than a movie. As much as it has its good moments, in the end nothing really tastes original, nostalgia is a soft imposition and everything happens through a frankly selfish, capricious and obnoxious child protagonist with whom it is impossible to empathize and who never stops learning anything throughout the film. I wish I could say that I have found myself with an adorable coming of age and one of the masterpieces of the year, but, frankly, this time James Gray has fallen into no man’s land… with everything going for him.