Some movies are less than their best intentions. It’s difficult to fully parse writer/director James Gray’s white guilt manifesto Armageddon Time, his follow-up to his sad-dad opus Ad Astra, without falling under its well-meaning spell. But we’ve seen this movie before, the one where a white person learns about racism to the detriment of their Black counterpart. In this case, the familiar narrative takes place in 1980, in a corner of Gray’s childhood neighborhood in Queens. Serving as Gray’s autobiographical stand-in is Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a petulant, artistically misunderstood Jewish kid navigating the uneasy racial politics of his household.

The film begins with Paul sketching a picture of his draconian sixth-grade teacher Mr. Turkeltaub (Andrew Polk) as a half-man, half-turkey. Paul proudly passes the lampoonish cartoon to his snickering classmates, in the process, inviting the wrath of his teacher. "You think this is appropriate?" asks Mr. Turkeltaub. "I just wanted to make everyone laugh," a meek Paul responds.

During this grilling, the only person who sticks up for Paul is Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb), a Black kid repeating this grade. As punishment, both boys are relegated to washing the blackboard. Behind his teacher’s back, Paul does a disco move to the appreciation of his classmates. At their outburst of giggles, the instructor doesn’t chastise Paul; he blames Johnny. This will not be the only time Johnny feels the consequences of Paul’s shortsighted actions. The bulk of the film, however, uses their hijinks as the backdrop to Paul’s troubled family life, helmed by his mother Esther (Anne Hathaway), his father Irving (Jeremy Strong), and the anti-Black opinions that thrum through their politically moderate Jewish household.  

Gray’s film lacks real introspection. 

Credit: Anne Joyce / Focus Features

Armageddon Time finds a surprising stability in Paul’s home despite his family's toxic dynamic. The opening dinner scene aptly depicts the family’s dysfunction, with a bullying older brother and an authoritative father who is often abusive. Strong plays the volcanic dad with a potent, brutal touch. Paul’s mother, who serves as the head of the Parent Teacher Association, often succumbs to her young son’s charm. When Paul opts to order dumplings after insulting her homemade food, her commands for Paul to put down the phone are for naught. He calls anyway.

The calm center of the family is Paul’s impish yet morally resolute grandfather Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins). By offering sage advice, Aaron often calms his grandson’s ill temper. Hopkins gives a physically delicate performance, built upon caved-in postures and a shuffling walk. But unlike the naturalistic Hathaway, who deftly immerses herself in the large ensemble, his star power overwhelms the frame more than Gray might desire. Paul is a reflection of these adults: He idolizes his grandfather, evangelizes his mother, and shies away from his father.

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To Gray’s credit, he does comprehend the tenuous proximity white Jewish people in America have sometimes occupied in relation to white supremacy. We see how casually Paul’s family dispenses with bigoted quips. And it’s brought into greater focus after Paul is caught in the boys bathroom smoking weed with Johnny. 

His alarmed parents hurriedly transfer him to his brother’s affluent private school where the likes of Fred Trump (John Diehl) and his daughter Maryanne Trump (Jessica Chastain) serve as donors/mentors, espousing bootstrapping talking points to the kids. It’s all part of the Graff family’s partial assimilation into white American society, one that required they change their name to avoid antisemitism and asks them to essentially pass. For the Graffs, this is a form of self-preservation.

The film, in fact, is accidentally a metaphor for how little politically moderate white folks, in general, have actually reckoned with their part in the contemporary anti-Black rise of Trumpian rhetoric.

Through Paul’s impressionable eyes, Gray documents the varied ways Paul’s family tacitly supports white supremacy. We see the anti-Black slurs, from both his family and outsiders, that Paul chooses to ignore. We witness how his white entitlement allows him to sidestep punishment. We observe how often he brazenly brags about his white privilege by boasting to Johnny about his family’s wealth. However, in one scene, Paul’s grandfather implores him to speak up for the people of color around him, saying, "You’re going to be a mensch... They never had your advantages."

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In Repeta’s measured performance you can sense the challenges a young Gray must have confronted. In Paul’s every capitulation to his bigoted classmates, Repeta externalizes the complex moral battlefield raging within the character. It’s a tender performance trapped in a politically wayward movie. 

This supposedly morally complex story, partly based on Gray’s childhood, lacks bite, lacks true introspective, and lacks any notion resembling interest in aesthetically and narratively humanizing its injured party: the lone Black character, Johnny. The film, in fact, is accidentally a metaphor for how little politically moderate white folks, in general, have actually reckoned with their part in the contemporary anti-Black rise of Trumpian rhetoric.   

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Armageddon Timeaims to show that anti-Blackness and antisemitism are equally terrible (in the larger world, Black Jews feel the brunt of both). Kanye West’s recent espousing of antisemitic Trumpian rhetoric has also reminded the American public of that very real fact. By wielding Johnny as an undefined tool, Gray, unfortunately, only addresses one in any meaningful way. 

Gray succeeds at interrogating how the wake of historical antisemitism can lead a family like the Graffs to align with white oppressors through assimilation and capitulation in name of self-preservation, or in the words of Paul’s grandmother, to "get a seat at the table." But in processing his own guilt, Gray succumbs to oppressing Johnny by erasing his personhood from the film, thereby unwittingly causing Black audiences to feel as unseen as Johnny does.

Armageddon Time is Hollywood failing with race again.

Credit: Anne Joyce / Focus Features

Hollywood often fails at rendering the inner lives of politically flawed white folks, primarily because these learning experiences often come at the behest of Black sacrifice. Films like Green Book, Driving Miss Daisy, and The Green Mile — all movies that also received widespread praise from white critics — similarly feature bare-bones Black characters with just enough personhood to not only illuminate the white character’s struggle but also to provide partial grounding for the Black character’s inevitable, nonsensical self-sacrifice. 

In his essay collection The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin writes about the sparse setup 1958's The Defiant Onesprovides for why Noah (Sidney Poitier) falls from the train for the sake of John (Tony Curtis), a racist man he hated nearly an hour before. The film operates under the belief that Black people inherently know their white counterpart’s life holds greater value than their own. For its own part, Armageddon Time provides so few reasons for why Paul and Johnny are friends; why at every point Johnny takes the fall for Paul; why Johnny implicitly goes along with Paul’s schemes. The only spark for their friendship — other than their role as class clowns — is Paul’s invitation to Johnny to sleep in his clubhouse, which is just a shed in his backyard. Johnny is unaware of the precariousness of his safety in proximity to white people to unbelievable levels, even for a kid.

Through Paul’s narrow vantage point, Gray often narratively shortchanges Johnny with broad character beats: He loves the Sugar Hill Gang; he wants to become an astronaut in Florida; his grandmother is battling dementia. We never see Johnny’s much-talked-about stepbrother. We barely glimpse his grandmother. (In the film’s other scenes, Webb performs some exceptional heavy lifting to imbue this character with a modicum of personhood). Paul’s myopia is, of course, by design: The scarce interest he takes in the personal life of his best friend illuminates his nauseating self-interest. That insularity, however, shouldn’t spill over to Gray’s gaze or his writing. 

Gray has made a film about a white Jewish kid learning a startling lesson concerning his own entitlement. And yet, his film perpetuates those same power dynamics by he and cinematographer Darius Khondji (Bardo) utilizing privileged lighting. Paul’s pale complexion and ginger hair glow in the warm autumnal sun; conversely, Johnny’s skin is zapped of all vibrancy and radiance, whittling down his personhood. 

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Compare Johnny’s scenes to Brian Tyree Henry inIf Beale Street Could Talk— the two actors share a similar complexion — and you can see the difference between a director who prioritizes the luminous quality of Black skin and one who doesn’t. In White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side, James A. Snead’s observation about representation, when applied to lighting, hits with equal devastation: "the portrayal of blacks in American cinema has been testimony to the fact that ‘what we don’t see’ and ‘what they don’t see’ hurts us — precisely because we are what we don’t see."

Armageddon Time is another version of The Defiant Ones. 

Credit: Anne Joyce / Focus Features

There are other failures in the film: The comfortable camera movements, which easily glide, snaking us through the Graff family’s interpersonal relationship, are equally reduced to mawkish, manipulative ends when the same technique is employed in a scene where Paul flees from police. (The set-up of Hopkins’ final monologue is also sentimentalized drivel). Khondji’s distant framing and the editing by Scott Morris of the climactic sequence of Paul and Johnny’s downfall are similarly calculated to the nauseating effect of us experiencing the panic endured by Paul, rather than the emotions felt by Johnny. 

Gray, to his credit, understands that Paul’s remorse — displayed during a later heart-to-heart with his dad — is a privilege. He gets another opportunity for self-growth, to learn from his mistakes. But is his regret on the same level as Johnny’s life-altering predicament? Should a white audience be given the opportunity to empathize with Paul through the pain felt by Johnny? 

You can’t help but recall Baldwin’s thoughts on The Defiant Ones. "[Poitier] jumps off the train in order to reassure white people, to make them know that they are not hated; that, though they have made human errors, they have done nothing for which to be hated," explained Baldwin. "The reassurance is false, the need is ignoble..."

Toward the end of Armageddon Time, there is an image that underscores the narrowness its white gaze never fully faces. Paul’s parents watch in stunned disbelief as Ronald Reagan wins the presidency. There is little doubt that Paul’s mother and father do not see themselves as racist, precisely because they do not support Reagan. Because of the Trump family scenes that connect their rhetoric to Reagan's, this election night moment serves as a parallel to the white, self-involved moderates who vocally defined themselves as not-Donald-Trump supporters.

Finally, at the school dance, Paul defiantly walks out when Fred Trump addresses the student body. Is his departure meant to be a rejection of his parents’ desired assimilation? Or is Paul actually defining himself as not a Trumpian stooge? The hurried needle drop of The Clash's "Armageddon Time"suggests the former. The film’s aesthetic politics portends the latter. 

With Armageddon Time, Gray, like so many other white folks since 2020, misses the opportunity to fully process his guilt in a way that isn’t self-indulgent. While it also wrestles with antisemitism and Jewish identities, the film too often caters to well-meaning white folks looking to balm their wounds by merely acknowledging their privilege. Despite its desires, Armageddon Time is a bundle of empty, over-calibrated gestures — gestures unlikely to signal to Black viewers that white people, in a post-Trump presidency, finally get it.    

Armageddon Time opens in select theaters on Oct. 28 and in theaters everywhere Nov. 4.

TopicsFilm