‘Armageddon Time’ reviews praise James Gray’s latest after Cannes debut
Is it Oscar time for James Gray? The director’s new film, “Armageddon Time,” is one of the few competition titles debuting at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, so it is also one of the few likely candidates that may have an impact on the Oscar race. (Of course, you never can tell these days, considering that “Parasite” debuted at Cannes in 2019—break free from subtitled prejudice, people!!)
While Gray’s previous work like “The Immigrant,” “The Lost City of Z,” and “Ad Astra” tends to do better with critics than audiences, this new one may end up pleasing both groups. “Armageddon Time” is a memoir-ish drama, set in Queens, New York during the 1980s, seen through the eyes of a sixth-grader named Paul, played by Banks Repeta. His parents are Emmy-winner Jeremy Strong and Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway, and his grandparents are two-time Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins and four-time Tony-nominee Tovah Feldshuh. Weirdly enough, Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, figures in the story (if you know 1980s Queens, you know this isn’t too bizarre), and is played by John Diehl. Recent Oscar-winner Jessica Chastain has a brief appearance as the 45th president’s sister, Maryanne Trump.
The Hollywood Reporter’s critic called it Gray’s “most acutely personal film” and “a refreshingly understated drama whose gentleness makes it all the more bittersweet.” The review specifically cited Hathaway for giving her best performance since “Rachel Getting Married” (for which she was nominated for an Academy Award) and added a nod of appreciation for cinematographer Darius Khondji, known for his work with auteurs like Michael Haneke, Woody Allen, and The Safdie Brothers.
The Los Angeles Times wrote that despite the film’s setting (its title being an unsettling comment then-President Reagan said to televangelist Jim Bakker) its themes of fear-mongering and privilege are just as relevant today. (The story deals with, among other things, young Paul’s friendship with a Black classmate.) The review praised the script’s nuance and “layered understanding of hypocrisy.”
Variety’s review also remarked on the authenticity in Gray’s script—“as if he were ripping pages from his diary”—and compared the work to another great Jewish-American nostalgist, the Barry Levinson that brought us films like “Diner,” “Tin Men,” and “Avalon.” A notice in The New Yorker called the movie “both a horror story and a tale of a debt that can never be paid; it’s a New York secular-Jewish story that resounds with a quasi-Biblical weight of moral responsibility.” Okay, so maybe not a crowd-pleaser, but sounds fascinating.
Less impressed was The Guardian, the only pan published thus far, describing the film as “slightly laborious and self-consciously acted.” The review called the work of Hopkins, Hathaway, and Strong “dinner-theatre performances.”
They’ve got words for how to respond to a comment like that in Queens, New York, but we’re not going to print them here.
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