The Hollywood blacklist was the darkest period in the history of the movie business. People were left without work, thrown in jail, divorced and even died all because they had links to the Communist Party. If a movie was going to be made about this, it would have to center on screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who won two Oscars despite being blacklisted.
Trumbo’s story is finally being told in front of the camera in the simply titled Trumbo. Directed by Jay Roach and based on Bruce Cook’s biography, the film follows the story of the blacklist like a book, which is Trumbo’s main fault. While a biography doesn’t really need peaks and valleys on the storytelling chart, movies do.
The Hollywood blacklist came after World War II, when the House Un-American Activities Committee began to investigate communist sympathizers around the country as the U.S.S.R. turned from ally to enemy. HUAC believed that communists could be a terrible influence on the U.S. and targeted Hollywood particularly. Trumbo was a member of the Hollywood Ten, a group that refused to testify. By doing so, he essentially sentenced himself to jail and he struggled to work after he was released. It was a time when fear seemed to overrule the Constitution, or at least that’s how Trumbo and his associates saw it.
It’s a tough story and one that is still relevant today. But Trumbo can’t take its own advice. Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) tells director Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) that you can’t have every scene in a movie be great or you would have a mundane film. Trumbo itself is a mostly mundane film because every scene reeks of an attempt to turn it into a great one.
This makes the movie a collection of great scenes that merely provide the audience with a Cliff Notes guide to an event that lasted a decade. Sure, it’s really great to see Helen Mirren chew scenery as Hedda Hopper, but her scene with Louis B. Mayer (Richard Portnow) keeps the film away from its focus.
The supporting cast is littered with a mixture of good and not-so-good performances. Mirren steals every scene she has, Elle Fanning is particularly strong as Trumbo’s eldest daughter, and Louis CK gives a revelatory dramatic performance as Arlen Hird. However, Michael Stuhlbarg turns Edward G. Robinson into a rather pathetic figure. (It feels like he’s playing Robinson’s character from Double Indemnity.) Christian Burkel’s performance as Preminger is cartoonish. Dean O'Gorman might bear an incredible resemblance to Kirk Douglas, but he doesn’t have enough time on screen to make a great impression.
The entirety of the movie rests on Bryan Cranston’s shoulders and he’s up for the challenge. True, most of his incredibly expressive face is hidden behind Trumbo’s mustache, yet he does show that he is earning his leading roles after Breaking Bad. His best work in the film comes when in the family home, when he gets to play off Diane Lane as his wife and his children.
Trumbo ultimately leans a bit too much on its actors to produce an entertaining film. Roach, whose work ranges from the Austin Powers movies to the HBO movies Game Change and Recount, is a practically inconsequential filmmaker. Anyone could have directed this movie with a cast like this if they didn’t care about making visual flairs. There’s no attempt to play with storytelling from writer John McNamara or Roach.
While the Hollywood blacklist is a story that is sadly relevant to today’s politics, where anyone can strike fear into our hearts just by saying something with no evidence, Trumbo fails its own subject. Yes, there’s humor and good performances in it, but the final product is standard biopic fare that would rather go the safe route. I’m not sure Trumbo would like that himself.