Anear Kenneth Branagh in Belfast and before Steven Spielberg in The FabelmansJames Gray unearths his childhood memories in Armageddon Time. At 53, the director of The Yards, Two Lovers or Ad Astra feels more clearly the bite of passing time… and decides in turn to bite into his madeleines. Less joyful than the Branagh, more political than the Spielberg, the result, as often with Gray, leaves a taste of dull melancholy in the mouth, the charm of which ends up winning in points rather than a radical knockout.
No (or few) flashes, an underexposed photo signed by the legendary Darius Khondji, long scenes of family dinners of which the filmmaker has the secret, a discreet but sharp sociopolitical look at this America from the Reagan dawn to the allure of the apocalypse… No doubt: screened in competition at the last Cannes Film Festival, Armageddon Time is pure James Gray, refocused on the intimate worlds of the author after the cosmic swerve of the colossal Ad Astra.
Through the character of young Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a turbulent Jewish kid from Queens in permanent rebellion against his 6-year-old teacherse and his parents, Gray charts the year 1980, that of his 12 years, his 400 blows and his first dreams of a future artist. A bridge between Proust and Truffaut via Marx, this semi-autobiographical film spins several plots: the friendship between Paul and his black classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb), the affection and complicity of his maternal grandfather Aaron ( Ukrainian immigrant, beautifully portrayed by Anthony Hopkins) or the social frustrations of his dysfunctional parents (played by Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong – well known to fans of the series Succession). The story takes its time, Gray patiently infuses its themes: racism, class guilt, the weight of identity, the conflict between our aspirations and the harshness of reality… A richness and a subtlety that act long after the screening, from which we emerge as always amazed by the director’s dizzying direction of actors.
Gray’s ghosts are not purely nostalgic in essence: the focus on the start of the Reagan presidency and the emergence of the Trump clan establishes a direct link between the fledgling 1980s and what Gray seems to tell us about current divisions. from America. Yet another self-righteous and penitent pensum? Far from it: drawing more on the tasty study of characters, Armageddon Time is much more complex and nuanced, like the responses of a melancholy, lucid and politically exciting James Gray.
Point : You can’t chain two more opposite films than your space blockbuster Ad Astra in 2019 and your new semi-autobiographical film Armageddon Time. Why such a contradiction?
James Gray : While I was doing Ad Astra, filming the story of this guy in a space capsule on the other side of the solar system, I thought to myself several times: “Wow, you are still very far from Queens… Next time, try to return a little at home! The idea then came to me of a film about what it feels like to return to the places of your childhood. My own children, to whom I often told bedtime stories about my family, my friends or my past, once asked me to show them the house where I lived when I was their age. We went back there and there is no longer any trace of my life there. The building is starting to fall into disrepair and I realized that day that this place, which I have always believed to be eternal, where so many dinners had taken place with my grandparents, who had held such an important place… eh well this place is as temporary as we are. Everyone is gone, these places and people are now ghosts. During confinement, I obviously tried to reread In Search of Lost Time… by Marcel Proust. But I didn’t go any further than On the Swann side, which moved me deeply with this ending where Proust talks about the things and places that mark our memories and disappear just as much as we do. With Armageddon TimeI wanted to make a ghost story about my family.
Thanks to the cinema, your loved ones and these places remain alive, right?
Yes, here it is… especially my maternal grandfather (the one from whom the character of Aaron Rubinowitz, embodied by Anthony Hopkins, is inspired). He played a very important role in my life, but it’s true that being a grandparent is easier than being a parent. As a father, I have obligations towards my children: I have to make sure they do the dishes, take out the garbage, do their homework… I don’t necessarily want to, but I have to. In the film, the kid Paul hates his family, because he aspires to a life as an artist, but his parents think first of all of his safety, they want to be sure that he will get out of it… and that’s not not the kind of guarantee that an artist’s life brings! The grandfather or the grandmother do not have this constraint. Anthony Hopkins is really very close on screen to my real grandfather. The latter did not at all correspond to the cliché of the old Yiddish Jew (he launches into an imitation of the Yiddish accent, Ed). He was a very elegant guy, with a touch of English culture.
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Do’Armaggedon Time is also a film about the American dream and the difficulty of achieving it?(He hesitates)… The film is no longer mine, I leave the field open to interpretations. But yes, it’s true, the character of Anthony Hopkins defines America as “the land of dreams”. My paternal grandparents came directly from Ukraine to the United States. My father’s father was a deeply unhappy guy, who regretted his former life, he carried a real sadness within him. My other grandfather, the one Anthony Hopkins is inspired by, was happier. My family experienced relative social mobility, but it was not without tension. In the film, the grandfather Aaron, under his debonair exterior, weaves anyway to ensure that the young Paul is transferred to a private school. He rejects the public system. I understand why, but this choice comes at a cost – in every sense of the word. The solutions proposed by Marx may be totally dysfunctional and unrealistic, but he still has a lot to teach us, as historical analysts, about the economy, social classes, the division between labor and management, the organization of capital. It really is his great legacy. Alas, Marxism is inapplicable. Many people still forget today how murderous its application – communism – was. Light communism does not exist. On the other hand, American life is partly wonderful but also, in certain aspects, brutal, cruel… and with real social chasms from one block to the other.
Do you take sides for one or the other of the two systems?
The purpose of art is not to provide a solution, but just to illustrate or shed light on a situation. Nothing is simple, like this notion of privilege, which cuts across different levels of complexity. Young Paul’s family situation is far from ideal and paved with success. But it’s still a privileged life… Then when he goes to this new private school, he comes across its owner Fred Trump (Donald Trump’s father, editor’s note) who, when Paul tells him his last name, replies: “You are a Jew”… Paul realizes his place in a certain hierarchical social order. I don’t have a solution to this.
I am more and more aware of the transience of life.
The film also evokes the loss of innocence through the character of Paul…
I am a little reserved on this notion of loss of innocence linked to childhood. It’s a modern idea tied to the western world and doesn’t really apply in parts of the world where kids make sneakers. The theme of loss in my film is rather to be understood in the sense that we are on this Earth for a short sequence, we do what we can and it ends very quickly. I am 53 years old and I am increasingly aware of the transience of life. My father died while I was riding Armageddon Time. I was on very good terms with him, he was vital in my life and, overnight, he was no longer there. I knew everyone I had to call for his funeral, but most of the people he knew were dead.
So that’s why you called your film Armageddon Time ? (literally: the end of time)
(He smiles) No, it’s a nod to the fact that when Ronald Reagan was elected, I remember that in the eyes of my family, it was a bit like the end of the world. Reagan himself used this expression publicly, the archive is in the film. Yes, somewhere, this year 1980 was the end of an era in my eyes. Mohammed Ali was a hero of mine and he lost one of his very last fights – against Larry Holmes. It was also the year that John Lennon was assassinated and, shortly after, Reagan, a former actor, was elected. And my parents often talked about the risks of nuclear war. Even as a child, I felt like something was coming to an end.
And in 2022, fears of a nuclear conflict have revived with the Ukrainian conflict…
This war inspires me with immense sadness, it is profoundly useless. All this death and destruction, in the name of a revengeful Tsarist spirit. But who is this guy? I am sorry, but I cannot be more eloquent on this subject.
“Armageddon Time”, by James Gray, in theaters.