YNOT at the Movies

American dreams seem to vary dramatically for different ethnicities, social classes, generations, and time periods. No matter which demographic you fall into and whether you realize it, your journey to realize your American dream is shaped and impacted by the society and its politics, and it's not entirely up to you whether you have and use some latent privileges during that process. The writer-director James Gray's arresting autobiographical drama "Armageddon Time" (USA 2022 | 115 min.) eloquently demonstrates that point through a teenage boy's experience in the '80s, when Ronald Reagan declared on TV: "We might be the generation that sees Armageddon." (Hence the title.)

The film opens in a classroom of Public School 173 in Queens, New York in 1980. It's the first day of 11-year-old Paul Graff's (Banks Repeta) 6th grade class at school. Paul loves to draw and dreams to become a famous artist someday. But his drawing of his teacher Mr. Turkeltaub (Andrew Polk), a.k.a. Turkey, on the first school day gets him in trouble. Also getting in trouble with Turkey is Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb), a black student in a school with mostly white students. Johnny is pretty much on his own, living with his grandma with dementia, but he does also have a dream—to be an astronaut. They become fast friends.

Although Paul's family is not exactly "super rich" as he tells Johnny in a matter-of-fact fashion, Paul is much better off than Johnny. His sometimes hot-tempered father Irving Graff (Jeremy Strong) works as a water heater repairman, and his loving mother Esther Graff (Anne Hathaway) is the president of the Parent Teacher Association at Paul's school. He is also frequently visited by his wise and amiable grandpa Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins). Grandpa Aaron often offers Paul life lessons and tells Paul how his Jewish family escaped the Nazis and immigrated here to pursue their American dreams. Paul feels the special connection to his grandpa because grandpa appears to be the only one who unconditionally encourages him to become an artist.

As Paul and Johnny become closer and get into more troubles, Paul's parents decide to move Paul to a private school, where he wears a tie and uniform, carries an oversized briefcase, and listens to Maryanne Trump's (Jessica Chastain) inspirational speeches. That's where and when Paul and Johnny's trajectories toward their dreams begin to diverge into different orbits beyond their control.

Taking scene by scene in daily lives, the director James Gray gracefully unfolds his story in a typical middle-class family that reflects the bigger society in America. At the same time, he terrifically portrays what the American dream means to each of the three generations in the family, and their dynamic interactions in achieving those dreams.

Through the eyes of a naive adolescent, the film magnifies the deeper social structure underneath that governs their lives, regardless if they understand or realize it. Certainly, Paul doesn't. But even at his early age, he begins to experience what privilege can provide, as well as what it can destroy, as his father explains to him: "It's unfair. But life is unfair."

Even though most of the actors are excellent in the film, especially Anthony Hopkins plying the warm and witty grandpa, Banks Repeta often seems awkwardly acting on the screen and less convincing as an ingenuous preteen.

It's probably not very hard for you to imagine what Paul and Johnny wake up to from their American dreams today, forty years later.

"Armageddon Time" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, November 4, 2022.