Trumbo review: Cranston delivers a career-best performance in this Hollywood biopic that is one of the best of the festival so far.
Trumbo review
Bryan Cranston leads the cast in this exceptional biopic of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a favourite on the festival circuit which finally makes it to Europe and this year’s BFI London Film Festival.
The story revolves around the life of the Academy-Award winning writer who penned the likes of Spartacus, Roman Holiday and The Brave One, winning Oscars for the latter two. Trumbo was famously blacklisted in the 1940s for being a communist and this film covers the period of time from shortly before said blacklisting in 1947, the 11-month prison sentence that he served for contempt shortly afterwards, and how his home life and indeed career progressed following his release.
Trumbo review
Starring alongside the magnificent Cranston is Helen Mirren, in yet another powerhouse performance as Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, a very interesting character who is hell-bent on exposing Trumbo as she discovers that he may still be working under various pseudonyms following his incarceration. Mirren, as always, is fantastic as the fascinating Hopper, an intense Hollywood type and seemingly uptight, backstabbing, hardened take-no-shit bitch. She’s brilliant. There’s also John Goodman as low-budget producer Frank King, a man who is only in the business for ‘money and pussy’ – his words – who offers an olive branch to the out-of-work Trumbo as he keeps hitting roadblocks due to his blacklisting. As Trumbo’s loyal wife Cleo is Diane Lane in a solid performance, who doesn’t seem to age in the twenty-plus years in which the story takes place, and also Elle Fanning in a career-defining turn as Trumbo activist daughter Nikola. We also have Louis C.K. In another scene-stealing role as Arlen Hird and the young actor Dean O’Gorman as Kirk Douglas, of who he bears an almost eerie resemblance. All are excellent.
Director Jay Roach has left his Austin Powers and Meet The Parents mainstream-comedy days way behind him, and while this solid biopic has some brilliantly funny scenes, it does reek of a filmmaker at the top of his game and finding a true calling in more serious cinema.
Trumbo review
The best thing here though, unsurprisingly, is Bryan Cranston. A best actor nod come Oscar season is an absolute shoe-in, and while we’ve got a long way to go until Hollywood starts to roll out the red carpets, we wouldn’t be surprised if he ran away with it. He is that good. So much so, that this may be his career-best performance, and that includes his portrayal of Walter White. Cranston embodies Trumbo, nailing every single beat of dialogue, and every mannerism, which is altogether confirmed when the customary ‘real footage’ of the legendary screenwriter is presented as the end credits roll. When you have that up against a screen heavyweight like Mirren, who nails the antagonist Hopper, you’re onto a winner.
Trumbo might be our favourite film of the festival so far. Look out for this when it hits cinemas on November 6 in north America, and late-January in the UK.
Trumbo review by Paul Heath, at the BFI London Film Festival, October, 2016.
Trumbo plays at this year’s BFI London Film Festival before getting a release in the USA on November 6, 2015, and across the UK on January 22, 2016.
