Jay Roach’s biopic on writer Dalton Trumbo, efficiently and succinctly called TRUMBO, begins with Dalton delivering his daughter a parable on communism. It’s about sharing and caring he tells her, and far from the totalitarian political manifestation that was to land her father in such hysterical hot water.
In the early to mid forties, Trumbo was Hollywood’s highest paid writer. In 1947, the successful career of Trumbo comes to a jumbo end when he and other Hollywood figures are blacklisted for their political ideologies. Risking everything, Trumbo refuses to renounce his beliefs, and pays the price for his commitment to freedom. The studios refuse to hire him, the US government sentence him to a year in prison. Come the Fifties, he became that timid Tinsel Town community’s highest paid unemployable writer and arguably the most famous of the infamous Hollywood Ten.
With an irrepressible creative talent, Trumbo would find his way back onto the big screen, writing several scripts under pseudonyms during his exile, including Roman Holiday and The Brave One, both of which won Academy Awards under aliases.
Un-American? Give me a break. Irony. Trumbo, on the face of it was a champagne socialist, a capitalist with a social conscience, defender of the land of opportunity, but opponent of the land of the opportunist. A fixture on the Hollywood social scene, and a political activist supporting labour unions, equal pay and civil rights. The winning combination of worker cum businessman, a craftsman who knew how to manipulate the mass entertainment mainstream movies that was Hollywood’s staple, made him the most financially successful screenwriter in the Forties and kept his career alive in the blacklisted fifties.
As befits the story of a screenwriter, John McNamara’s script sizzles with the eccentricity of the man and the strange la la land he laboured in.
Bryan Cranston in the title role breaks brilliant, cadence clear, wit wielded like a weapon, a chain smoking social conscience stalwart. He’s been nominated for an Oscar in his own name and right.
As his supportive wife, Diana Lane is luminous as ever, proud but pragmatic, two feet firmly on terra firma as her spouse two finger types his fancies onto the page, often from bad back salving bathtub.
The supporting cast have enormous fun playing larger than life luminaries of the age. Helen Mirren is harridan hateful as Hedda Hopper, gossip columnist and Commie hunter, David James Elliot plays a two fisted right wing bullying John Wayne and Christian Berkel’s Otto Preminger is a Teutonic eccentric delight. Michael Stuhlbarg plays the enigmatic actor Edward G. Robinson with a touch of the tragedian, and comedian Louis C.K., plays a composite of a number of real-life figures who shares his political ideology.
And then there’s John Goodman and Stephen Root as the producing partners of B grade pictures that Trumbo goes to work for. Delicious!
TRUMBO looks like a film from it’s own era, due largely to the exquisite costume design of a frequent collaborator with Jay Roach, Daniel Orlandi.
And there is a terrific score to accompany the drama and comedy by Theodore Shapiro composer of such recent gems as the woefully under appreciated Infinitely Polar Bear, starring Mark Ruffalo and Danny Collins starring Al Pacino.
TRUMBO is a tribute to Trumbo, not so much to his writing but his resilience. He joined the system successfully; when ostracized, he beat it successfully. He knew the right tricks and what would play. Something the makers also know.