Trumbo

Film (2015)

With Bryan Cranston (Dalton Trumbo), Diane Lane (Cleo Trumbo), Elle Fanning (Niki Trumbo), Helen Mirren (Hedda Hopper), Michael Stuhlbarg (Edward G. Robinson), Louis C.K. (Arlen Hird), Richard Portnow (Louis B. Mayer), Dean O’Gorman (Kirk Douglas), Christian Berkel (Otto Preminger), Roger Bart (Buddy Ross), John Goodman (Frank King)

Accomplished and talented screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), indicted along with nine other writers collectively known as the Hollywood Ten, was convicted in 1947 for contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the insinuating and invasive inquiries of the House Un-American Activites Committee. Trumbo served eleven months in a federal penitentiary in 1950.

As Hollywood was attacked by the House Un-American Activities Committee and its cohorts, all sorts of people were scorned and sidelined from regular work in the film business for many years.

After his release, Trumbo, now blacklisted in Hollywood, went underground as a writer, still producing manuscripts, but having them circulated under pseudonyms or by other writers acting as fronts; two of those scripts won Academy Awards.

Bryan Cranston, known most recently for his great characterization of LBJ in the play All The Way and noted as the complicated protagonist of the AMC television series Breaking Bad (2008-2013), made an earlier name for himself as a comic lead in the TV series Malcolm In The Middle (2000-2006). In a wonderfully painted characterization of Trumbo here, Cranston gives a portrayal which is pointed and comedic as well as poignant and heartfelt. His Trumbo is gallant, also very funny and believable as the great oddball, principled Hollywood screenwriter.

Diane Lane (Cleo Trumbo) is also extremely good as Trumbo’s graceful and handsome wife, forthright in her support of Trumbo’s courageous stance.

The incredibly versatile Helen Mirren, of all people, plays the insidious Hedda Hopper, omnipresent Hollywood gossip columnist and fervent anti-Communist, who with actors like John Wayne, headed up an alliance of fervently anti-Communist actors and drummed up antipathy for anyone in Hollywood, like Trumbo, who had shown any interest in that direction.

Louis C.K. (Arlen Hird), the popular comedian, gives a very good turn as friend of Trumbo and one of the Hollywood Ten. Who knew he was such a good dramatic actor?

The roles of Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) and Kirk Douglas (Dean O’Gorman) in helping Trumbo to emerge from hiding behind literary fronts is well told.

Michael Stuhlbarg (Edward G. Robinson) gives a heartbreaking portrayal of the actor whose sympathies at the outset were noble but whose situation became more complicated as time progressed.

John Goodman (Frank King) has a great role here as the passionate and wild producer of low-budget films; he gets to show his stuff when things come to a head in one great, dramatic scene. Goodman packs a punch, as he did in the Coen brothers’ classic The Big Lebowski (1998), stewing under the surface until the surface just can’t hold him any longer.

A tidbit near the end of the film shows President Kennedy coming out of the screening of Spartacus (1960), directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas, who was instrumental in getting Trumbo’s name to be listed, finally, as screenwriter. Asked how he liked the film, Kennedy said that he did, not mentionaing anything about Trumbo.

There was actually more to this than meets the eye. Kennedy’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a fervent anti-Communist and a supporter and friend of Joseph McCarthy, the rabidly anti-Communist Senator from Wisconsin who led the infamous Army McCarthy Hearings in 1954. Democrat John Kennedy never criticized Republican McCarthy, probably due to this legacy of family friendship, as well as affiliation as prominent Catholics in national politics.

Given all of that, it was actually a pretty big deal for President Kennedy to come out of that Spartacus screening without mentioning any grievance about the screenwriting credit given to Trumbo.

– BADMan