ARMAGEDDON TIME, US, 2022. Starring Michael Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Anthony Hopkins, Jaylin Webb. Directed by James Gray. 115 minutes. Rated M (A scene of family violence and coarse language.)
James Gray’s Armageddon Time has an interesting title. Set in 1980 shortly before Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as US President, it’s not only about the ‘end of days’ as the title suggests, but about change and upheaval, the impact of childhood on the future self, and the difficulty of fitting in, being different to others.
Armageddon Time is an autobiographical account of Gray’s childhood – growing up in the borough of Queens in New York. The story is deeply personal and has at its heart the friendship between a clever, quirky, creatively artistic 11-year-old Paul Graff (Repeta), and his equally smart schoolmate, Johnny (Webb).
In many ways Armageddon Time can be viewed as a coming-of-age-story, but there is much in Gray’s personal history that takes the story to another level. Gray’s original surname was Grayevsky, a name his great-grandparents changed after arriving in America via England from West Ukraine/USSR. Thus Paul Graff (aka Gray) who looks ‘white’ comes from a Russian-Jewish background, while Johnny as we can clearly see on screen, is ‘black’.
The way we ‘see’ things is central to the film’s story as it is in life. On one level, Paul and Johnny see themselves reflected in each other. Each is an outsider in the sense that their quirky individualism makes them different to their more compliant peers. But as Paul and Johnny enter sixth grade they soon learn from their bigoted, tyrannical schoolteacher Mr Turkeltaub (Andrew Polk), that ‘seeing’ is more than a physical function.
It’s about how we evaluate people, and with the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s well in the past, ‘black’ in Reagan’s America means that if you are descended from slaves you are inferior, with ‘whites’ you’re superior overlords.
The film’s connection with Putin and the ongoing Ukraine/Russian war is inherently connected to the film’s theme of antisemitism and racism as experienced by Gray growing up as a teenager in America in the 1980s. Yet it is in many ways so embedded in the storyline that it’s almost subliminal.
We learn from the beginning that Paul’s family is Russian-Jewish and see them as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parents in all their manifestations. And although we’re sometimes shocked by their actions, we understand and like them.
Armageddon Times is character driven with commanding performances from all the actors, especially Hathaway as Paul’s mother Esther, Strong (Succession) as his father Irving, and Hopkins as Aaron Rabinowitz, Paul’s savvy and understanding grandfather. Some have criticised the film because the key Jewish characters are all played by non-Jews but this is probably intentional and in many ways gives the film more power and authority.
Universal
Released 4 November
(L to R) Top: Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff and Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff. Above: (L to R) Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff and Anthony Hopkins as Grandpa Aaron Rabinowitz in director James Gray's Armageddon Time, a Focus Features release. Courtesy of Anne Joyce / Focus Features. © 2022 Focus Features, LLC.