Armageddon Time: James Gray's Tale of a Mixed-Race Friendship, a Child's Eye View of a Complex World
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A-minus
When do we start to understand how the adult world works and our place in it? How do we, as children, reconcile the gap between who we are and what our families hope for us?
That, and issues of race and class, are at the heart of writer/director James Gray’s gentle, achingly melancholy and thematically complex film Armageddon Time.
The semi-autobiographical movie boasts a dream cast. Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway, as you’d expect, turn in deep and wonderful performances.
Jaylin Webb and Banks Repeta
But the film belongs to two young actors: Jaylin Webb, and especially Banks Repeta.
Set in 1980, leading up to the election of Ronald Reagan as President, the film centers on 11-year-old Paul Graff (Repeta ) the youngest son and grandson of a tight knit Jewish family living in Queens.
On the first day of Grade Six, he bonds with Johnny (Webb), a black kid who has been held back and is repeating the grade again. They’re both class clowns, mischief-makers, and are frequently in trouble for their antics (although Paul notes that his friend gets the worse of it).
They have different passions: Paul wants to be a visual artist. Johnny wants to work for NASA. Their home circumstances are completely different. Johnny is living with his grandmother, who is too ill to look after him. Paul is surrounded by family at close quarters in their small home. But as friends often do at that age, they like each other and click. Together, unburdened by the world of adults and adult worries, they simply have fun together.
As the year goes on, circumstances that neither of them can control will push the boys farther apart, and issues of class and race will underscore that.
Paul seems emotionally young for his age. Paul tells Johnny that his family is rich, when in fact, they’re working class. HIs practical, upbeat mom Esther (Hathaway) and his glum father Irving (Strong) struggle with bills. Irving is a boiler repair man, who is perpetually worried, and seems like he’s carrying the world on his shoulders.
Paul is particularly close to his beloved grandfather Aaron (Hopkins), an elegant British man, who indulges Paul’s playfulness and his boyish passions in a way that the other family members don’t. They spend time together almost daily, and Aaron keeps up a gentle patter of conversation talking to Paul about more adult things, about how to be in the world. it often seems like Aaron’s words go over his grandson’s head.
Paul’s a sweet whimsical kid, but he has some odd behavioural traits. He’s a bit dreamy and distractible, and tends to misbehave no matter what the punishment.
His teachers suggest that he’s slow and might need remedial help. Aaron wants to take Paul out of public school and send him to the same private school that his brother Ted goes to, to give him advantages in the world. The prospect of private school terrifies Paul.
But there is also a subtle sense of danger that hovers over Paul’s family. As in many Jewish families, perhaps especially of that era, the shadow of the Holocaust hangs over them, even in moments of togetherness and happy occasions. At one point Aaron tells a harrowing story about his mother’s experience before she escaped from Germany.
He tells it with a light tone, but it’s clear that he’s leaving something horrible out. Even, now the family worries about anti-Semitism, and has encountered it. The idea of being safe for them in the U.S. isn’t a given.
The drive to do well, to be good, to be successful, to survive is part of the undercurrent in Paul’s home life.
And Paul, who often seems overwhelmed and sometimes frozen when it comes to deciding how to behave or act, doesn’t always rise to the occasion.
There’s a lot going on here. Armageddon Time is a kind of coming of age story, or at least the beginning of one, and also one that deals with race and class. Gray gives us the child’s view of all of this. The moments of friendship, silliness, but also the contradictory messages Paul gets from the significant adults in his life.
They’re talking honestly to him, and sometimes in surprising ways. These are people he loves, who love him. They want things for him that are the best, but for a boy, this is difficult to take in and reconcile. Gray makes us feel Paul’s confusion and his disappointment.
As the film goes on, Johnny’s life changes too, and the boys’ relationship changes too, both of them being too young to know what to do, never mind how to act.
This is a thoughtful movie. Gray isn’t sending us out of the theatre with neatly tied-up threads.
Instead the movie reflects on a time and place in history, one that should be in the rear-view mirror, but with issues and questions that are sadly still relevant.
Armageddon Time, written and directed by James Gray, starring Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb. Opens in theatres nationwide, Friday, November 4.