The Apprentice: a journey of controversy
News
Back in May during the Cannes Film Festival, Donald Trump’s attorneys sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers of The Apprentice following the revelation of negative depictions of the presidential candidate including a rape scene involving his former wife, Ivanka Trump. The film then faced distribution struggles in the U.S. as buyers were reluctant to take on the biopic that focuses on Trump’s early days in 1970s New York. The filmmakers later launched a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to ensure its release.
Fast forward to October with The Apprentice now showing in cinemas, Trump broke his silence on the film, calling it a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” in a post on his social media platform: truthsocial.com.
The film’s producer, Daniel Bekerman responded to Trump’s post via X, in an equally fragile reaction that indicates, in case you weren’t sure, that the filmmakers are no fans of the former president.
As expected, the reaction and commentary from both sides of the spectrum have been incredibly politically charged. The Apprentice is being perceived as a political tool rather than art. But if you were to strip away your own political biases and discount the activism of the filmmakers, could you enjoy viewing The Apprentice as a work of art? I’d say yes.
In a world that is obsessed and at times too conscious of the politics that take place in reality, there is a danger that we completely slip away from using artistic merit as a measure of quality. If we use politics as a measure of quality, we are destined to create a wave of cinema that will lose any value in being referred to as ‘escapism’. That will be the day in which art dies.
To read my review of The Apprentice which was published back in May for GB News, click here or copy and paste the following URL into a browser of your choice: https://www.gbnews.com/celebrity/the-apprentice-film-review-donald-trump
Out in UK cinemas from today