Trumbo

The pyrotechnics of the real Dalton Trumbo are strangely muted in this film, which positions him as some noble hero and Hedda Hopper as a crazed megalomaniac. It’s far too simplistic in its worldview, and only occasionally entertaining as a piece of Hollywood history. Even then, it plays fast and loose with the truth of the situation, preferring to paint everyone on the blacklist as lily white innocent victims. I firmly believe that they were unjustly victimized, but they weren’t all saintly people. To present them as such is dishonest, and to present their opposition as dumb paranoids is just lazy.

Trumbo just don’t want to present a SparkNotes style spin on the era, but rather tell a redemption story of Hollywood itself. That sound you hear is the film simultaneously clapping and slapping itself on the back. Still, it does have some highly entertaining moments. Helen Mirren tears into Hedda Hopper for all of the malicious, high-camp villainy possible. I half expected her to show up in a scene asking if she could skin puppies to make a coat. And the parade of stars and moguls from the studio era are fun to watch, even if most of them don’t look or sound remotely like their counterparts.

Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson is a finely done portrait, even if Stuhlbarg doesn’t quite effectively capture Robinson’s unique vocal rhythms and patterns. David James Elliott as John Wayne is shockingly well done, even if the script wants to portray Wayne as a dumb cowboy type. Cristian Berkel and Dean O’Gorman as Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas look the closest to their real-life counterparts, but the script doesn’t quite know what to do with them. Preminger enters as a kooky foreigner, benign but strange, and Douglas talks through his teeth and squints, entering the film with a halo over his head. While John Goodman has a great time as B-movie titan Frank King, and his energy is infectious.

Towering over Trumbo is Bryan Cranston’s central performance, which is very good. I’m both shocked to find him in the Best Actor Oscar race, not because his performance isn’t worthy, but the surrounding movie doesn’t know what to do with it. Cranston captures Trumbo’s world-weariness and off-kilter vocal cadence, is stuck playing scenes that alternate between saccharine, a distinct lack of subtlety, and are entirely reductive to the reality of the events. A scene where Trumbo explains communism to his daughter is overrun with cheap emotional pleading, and no matter how valiantly Cranston tries to spin the material into gold not even his massive talents can manage it. And that is the biggest problem with Trumbo, it takes an oddly shaped figure, and sands off all of the prickly corners and sides into a smooth flat circle.