As a young Donald Trump in the new film The apprenticeSebastian Stan crouches when he walks, pouts when he talks, and delivers every line of dialogue in a near-monotone. Such behavior tends to form the basis of any current Trump appearance, but Stan conveys more than just a comical impression. He finds complexity in these characteristics: an instinctive defensiveness in the hunched shoulders, a frustrated irritation in the scowls. In other words, it's precise work.

If only the film around him were as carefully calibrated. The apprentice attempts to chart Trump's rise from real estate entrepreneur to future presidential candidate by focusing on his early career in the 1970s and 1980s, when he worked under the tutelage of combative lawyer Roy Cohn (played by Consequence(Jeremy Strong), he learned how to exude power and not just crave it. The film is a muddy exercise in Trumpology that never answers the biggest question it raises: What does the chronicle of Trump's early days reveal about one of the most well-documented and least mysterious men in recent American history?

Not much, as it turns out. Still, the film had difficulty finding a U.S. distributor willing to support it during production. After all, Trump is a polarizing figure and notoriously argumentative. After making its debut at this year's Cannes Film Festival The apprentice In fact, the company faced legal threats from the Trump campaign and had to spend months searching for a company that could help it reach American audiences – those most likely to see and be influenced by the film . Briarcliff Entertainment, a small company that has earned a reputation for taking on controversial projects, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the film's theatrical release, which opens Friday.

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But the director Ali Abbasi, an Iranian-Danish filmmaker, whose previous film Holy spider, has turned a real-life serial killer case into a fascinating drama, he pointed out The apprentice isn't actually supposed to be about Trump; Rather, it is an outsider's perspective on America through its most divisive avatar. “We wanted to do a punk rock version of a historical film,” Abbasi said Vanity Fairciting Stanley Kubrick's poignant epic Barry Lyndon as inspiration. Together with screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, a journalist who has long covered Trump, he intended to “take politics out of the story entirely.”

The idea of ​​a politics-free film about Trump may be provocative for some viewers, but The apprentice never quite achieves this goal. The plot is divided into two parts: In the first part, the 20-year-old Trump, still trying to build a real estate career and climb the social ladder, is blinded by Cohn's fame. He follows him through New York City for most of the 1970s, adopting Cohn's three principles of success: Attack, attack, attack; admit nothing, deny everything; And Demand victory, never admit defeat. In the second part, Trump fully embodied these rules. It's only a two-year time jump, from 1977 to 1979, and yet it feels unsettling because the Trump of the '80s is more ruthless than Cohn ever was. And this decision to forego depicting his transition to callousness prevents the film from fulfilling Abbasi and Sherman's goal of interpreting America's transformation. Instead, many tasteless references are made to today's Trump: a scene in which he is interested in the possible new slogan for Ronald Reagan's first presidential campaign – “Let's make America great again!” – is played for laughs. During an interview, as he jokes about the prospect of starting a political campaign himself, the shot freezes for a moment, as if inviting the audience to giggle along.

By leaving out the years in which Trump began to emerge, The apprentice provides a summary of his character rather than a story arc. Take his relationship with Ivana (Maria Bakalova), for example: in the first half of the film, Trump is a hapless suitor who literally falls over trying to impress her. In the second half, he is seen attacking his now-wife in their home, in a violent scene that likely drew the ire of the Trump campaign. (The scene is based on Ivana's account of an incident in a 1990 divorce declaration that she later retracted; Trump also denied the claim.) The contrast highlights, but does not show, the difference between a power-hungry man and an actually powerful man not the trajectory itself. The apprentice suggests that Cohn was accelerating the deterioration already present in his protégé, but the opening scenes show the opposite – that Trump was, at heart, simply naive. He desperately tries to contribute to his family's real estate business; he idolizes his older brother; he displays an affected loyalty to Cohn. Abbasi may have wanted to avoid putting his finger on the political scale – to avoid sympathy or condemnation – but the result is a superficial, bleak portrait.

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Perhaps this lack of substance is meant to evoke the paltry nature of the TV show the film is named after. But The apprentice offers insights into more nuanced ideas. The shot is handsome, the production design makes 1970s New York seem like it's in a state of decay, and the grime extends to the staging: In one of the earlier, more dynamic scenes, Trump pushes Cohn into a bathroom to get him away to convince its value. The best parts of the film deal with how Cohn bolstered his own ego and took great pleasure in molding Trump in his image; Stan and Strong deliver committed, electrifying performances in their scenes together. But the energy dissipates when The apprentice segues into a supercut of the younger Trump's lore. It recreates some of his most boastful interviews. It shows his reported scalp reduction surgery. It ends in 1987 when he meets the ghostwriter of his memoirs. When the ailing Cohn finally confronts Trump for avoiding him, the encounter seems perfunctory, like a mere interruption to an extended clip show.

The apprentice could have delved deeper into Trump's personality or explored how it became entrenched. However, by trying to avoid how Trump's past reflects his current political approach – his zero-sum relationship to power, his pettiness and his selfishness – while ignoring what viewers know about him, the film falls into a trap. The intention of Abbasi and Sherman – to keep today's Trump at a distance And Dramatizing his backstory in a cheeky “punk rock” way is inherently flawed, because separating Trump's philosophies from his transformation as a public figure means stripping the story of any effectiveness or relevance. Even the one relationship between Trump and Cohn that might seem revealing ends up weakening. Instead, the film becomes an exhaustive reenactment of well-known events – a safe endeavor that hinges on its protagonist's infamy.