Movie Review: Trumbo

Well, I finally watched "Trumbo," a movie that piqued my curiosity ever since first hearing about it some years ago. As the title suggests, the movie is about Dalton Trumbo, a Hollywood writer who was thrown in jail and then blacklisted for years during the darkest days of the anti-communist crusades and paranoia. This de facto movement was championed by some very well-known Hollywood elitists of their time, including Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan, among others. It was a time of paranoia, and anything and everything that smacked even remotely of what people believed to be communism.

Trumbo, however, did not simply back down. He stood firm, and he fought. A brilliant writer, he reduced himself to making some crappy movies, just so that he and his family could stay afloat in greatly reduced circumstances. Little by little, he took chances and began writing better stuff that received some notice and admiration. Some people suspected that Trumbo was the real writer of these quality movies, and while some admired, others, including the rabid anti-communists, began to have their suspicions that this former communist Hollywood writer was behind some famous and celebrated movies.

Ultimately, Trumbo keeps writing, keeps getting more and more recognition, and even more and more praise. By the time that he gets credit for Spartacus, and then earns praise from the young new President John F. Kennedy, he knew that the battle was won. But the drama that his family and friends and others who were blacklisted had been real.

This movie has some scary aspects (not in the horror sense) about political extremism and intolerance, fueled by paranoia and mean-spiritedness. Interspersed within this movie are actual clips of some famous anti-communist activists, including future President Richard Nixon and future President Ronald Reagan. This really happened, after all. Very talented people and brilliant minds in the "land of the free" were indeed thrown into prison and blacklisted because of their political beliefs, or perhaps even former political beliefs. We see numerous examples of both cowardice and courage, and through it all, a sort of American tragedy that runs as a paradox to our convenient tendency towards self-congratulations and makes a big show about being a country that treasures freedom of thought and freedom of speech, but then often does not live up to these lofty notions. Anyone who thinks that these kinds of threats of intolerance are in the past should remember very recent history, and even present-day America, when Trumpists also claim to love the freedom that this country has, and loudly and proudly wear and display patriotic symbols in support of this freedom, all while doing everything to suppress actual freedom, and displaying ugly intolerance towards those who believe differently than they do. Remember that things like science were actively censored, officially, by the Trump White House, and that some people still feel that he is the rightful president. For that reason, this movie feels more timely and truer now than when it was first released. 

Bryan Cranston is absolutely fantastic. He is starting to be one of those actors who, admittedly, I had not necessarily noticed or paid attention to before, but who is starting to gain my respect and admiration for how convincing his acting is. I had known about him in "Breaking Bad," of course, although I only began watching one or two episodes, finally, very recently (within the past couple of weeks). Also, he was great in "All the Way," a movie about Lyndon B. Johnson, which was quite good, and where Cranston's acting was, once again, fantastic. 

 A movie that comes highly recommended!