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The late 1940s are depicted in “Trumbo,” a TV-style biography about blacklisted author Dalton Trumbo, and Bryan Cranston plays the title character who is currently serving a federal prison sentence. When he meets J. Parnell Thomas (James DuMont), the former chair of that committee who was found guilty of tax evasion, he has just had a disastrous appearance before the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Trumbo sardonically responds to the congressman’s satirical statement that they are now in the same situation by saying, “Except that you committed a crime and I didn’t.”
Which reveals a lot about “Trumbo”: it’s another of those trite, made-to-order movies about the Hollywood blacklist where the blacklisted actors are all completely innocent. Trumbo was in fact found guilty of a crime called contempt of Congress, which involves refusing to provide even the most basic factual testimony to a committee conducting a legally sound but politically contentious investigation.
Reviewing a film like “Trumbo” is difficult since it was made after decades of exaggeration and distortion that have left the public’s recollection of the events it depicts rife with errors. For instance, the DVD sleeve copy for a recent Trumbo documentary refers to him as “one of the Hollywood Ten” who were blacklisted by the House Un-American Committee in the 1940s due to their communist ties.
That assertion would undoubtedly be taken at face value by most people as fact. But HUAC never put anyone on a blacklist. The blacklist was created by Hollywood’s studio heads after the 1947 hearings; for more than ten years, most people in the business either endorsed it or didn’t publicly criticize it. While acknowledging that he did hold the 1947 Congress and some future ones in contempt, Trumbo himself was emphatic that Hollywood, not the U.S. government or its vile right-wingers, was to responsible for the blacklist.
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One of the most important aspects is missing in “Trumbo,” which has the same confusing mythology that has developed around the blacklist since the 1970s. This myth relies on numerous misconceptions and feeds others (such as the false claim that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was involved in Congress’ pursuit of Hollywood). Above all, it challenges us to view the Communist Party of the United States as merely another political organization rather than as the domestic agent of a brutal and hostile foreign regime.
At a time when the US and USSR were allies, Trumbo joined the Communist Party in 1943. Over the years he was a member, we never see any evidence of his activities in the party. Instead, he is a wealthy, extremely successful screenwriter as the movie opens in 1947; his party membership causes HUAC to bring him in for questioning. The movie demonstrates that the Hollywood Ten expect the Supreme Court to overturn their subsequent convictions for contempt of Congress, even though it doesn’t explain why they all adopted the same, disastrous strategy of claiming the First Amendment (rather than the Fifth, which would keep subsequent witnesses out of jail).
Trumbo Quiz
They all end themselves in prison after that doesn’t happen, where Trumbo discovers that certain proletariat people dislike his communism just as much as right-wingers like John Wayne do. He is forced to create screenplays for low-budget producers like the King brothers while under a pseudonym when he returns to Hollywood after spending two years in Mexico with three other screenwriters and their families (played for laughs by John Goodman and Stephen Root). He even gets to create “Roman Holiday” and “The Brave One,” which win Oscars that go to the “front” writers whose names were put on them. All of this while participating in this charade.
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The heart of the film is Trumbo’s struggles to continue writing while on the blacklist and his attempts to do so. His brave wife Cleo (Diane Lane) and their three school-aged children must deal with an existence based on a sophisticated web of lies as well as the obstinacy of a writer who spends a lot of time writing in the bathtub while smoking and swilling alcohol. The most interesting portion of the film, these events hint to a triumph for Trumbo that will also save others. Kirk Douglas hires him to write “Spartacus,” and Otto Preminger asks him to adapt “Exodus.”
The direction of Jay Roach evokes the quick efficiency of his TV dramas like “Game Change,” but he doesn’t appear interested in going beyond the drama’s tame surface. We witness a bit of Trumbo’s famous statement toward the end of the film, when he is an older man, in which he said that the blacklist story had no heroes or villains—only victims. The movie neither explains how Trumbo’s long-simmering disenchantment with the party caused it nor does it show us how this heresy led to the severe acrimony from his communist colleagues. Such contextualizational errors abound in the movie.
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For instance, there is little indication of the complete hatred that Trumbo and his communist allies have for liberals, whom they frequently regarded with greater hostility than they did right-wingers. However, that naturally makes sense. The communists wanted to overturn American democracy by a revolution. They believed that a fascist takeover would only hasten that outcome and that liberal victory would only slow it down.
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Trumbo is portrayed by Cranston with much of his obstinate grumpiness, but without his cheeky enthusiasm and well-known joie de vivre; much too frequently, he just comes off as dyspeptic. But one of the film’s biggest issues is that the majority of the characters in John McNamara’s script are painted with basic strokes. Setting up a political drama in the stereotypical black-hat/white-hat manner creates amusingly cartoonish antagonists like flamboyant gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (deliciously portrayed by Helen Mirren) and the typical blacklist martyrs, but it also robs the narrative of the nuance and complexity that it begs for.
For more personality quizzes check this: Grandma Quiz.
