Hugh Linehan: What I learned from Trump coming-of-age movie The Apprentice

In The News

The Apprentice isn’t a movie about the reality TV series that made its presenter, New York businessman Donald Trump, a star. Instead it tracks the relationship from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, between Trump (Sebastian Stan) as a young man desperate for acknowledgment, fame and wealth and the legendary lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), a whatever-it-takes fixer for a host of shady clients, including the mob.

It is Trump who is the apprentice here, eagerly learning from an amoral master and latching on to a particular style of “winning”.

This vivid, sometimes fun, always compelling telling (written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Iranian film-maker Ali Abbasi) won an eight-minute standing ovation when it premiered in Cannes in May but as Irish Times culture columnist Hugh Linehan explains, its path to global cinema screens was fraught as distributors backed away from what they feared could be trouble if Trump is re-elected.

Screen Ireland came on board to help finance the distribution.

But what does the film ultimately say about Trump? And will it have any impact on the election?

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and John Casey.

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