‘There ain’t no one else gonna stick up for me except me...’
Writer-director James Grey is an artist whose work has mostly passed me by. I never caught The Lost City of Z and I didn’t care for Ad Astra but Armageddon Time plays in the same sandbox as Spielberg’s recent critical hit The Fabelmans. Like that film, Grey’s latest picture is a semi-autobiographical take on life growing up in a Jewish family – this time in the ’80s rather than the sepia-tinged ’50s of Spielberg’s childhood…
Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) is a troubled kid who is more interested in nurturing his burgeoning artistic ability rather than following the rules laid out at school and at home. His father (Jeremy Strong) is cold and inscrutable. His mother (Anne Hathaway) has a tough time controlling Paul and his brother Ted (Ryan Sell). Only Paul’s loving grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) is able to reach the boy. When Paul befriends Johnny (Jaylin Webb), a black kid who similarly struggles with authority, the two forge a friendship that does not go down well with Paul’s parents.
Armageddon Time is clearly a passion project for Grey who wanted to tell the story of his upbringing in Queens, New York during the Regan years. As with The Fabelmans, this film treats its characters as real human beings with complicated lives and nuanced, complex personalities. Paul’s parents are painted as a struggling family unit just trying their best in their own flawed, inconsistent way. Both Hathaway and particularly Strong imbue their performances with an intense authenticity. I believed this family. Indeed, I’ve been around families just like this one all my life.
The film takes its title from The Clash song and also from the lingering threat of nuclear annihilation that defined the ’70s and ’80s. That anxiety lingers throughout the film. Never overtly mentioned but never too far away either. This gives the whole thing an air of melancholic anxiety. This is not a hopeless film but it also doesn’t have much warmth either. You won’t walk out of it punching the air.
For those of us who go to the movies to see our own lives or an approximation of our lives fed back to us, Armageddon Time is a real picture with real people at its core. Thought-provoking cinema.