Armageddon Time review: Hard lessons about life in America

Can you remember the first day of sixth grade? Do you even want that? James Gray, in the opening scene of “Armageddon Time”, recreates his thin and ragged film, all very accurately.

We are at Public School 173 in Queens, New York, in our offices in Mr. Turkeltop’s class. It’s 1980 – you’re probably old enough to remember that too – and two boys are about to get into trouble, one speaking while the names are calling and the other drawing a picture of the teacher (Andrew Polk) with the body of a turkey. It seems that if your name is Turkeltaub and you teach 6th grade, you might be able to take the joke, but on the other hand, maybe not being able to take the joke is the whole reason you taught 6th grade in the first place. This is a man, after all, whose job requires him to utter the phrase, “The gym is a privilege, folks,” with a straight face.

“Armageddon Time” is not about Mr. Turkeltaub, although his disdain for his students helps drive his plots. It’s not about gym classes either, but it’s – cleverly, uncomfortable, and ultimately tragic – about the franchise.

The two troublemakers—Johnny Davis (Jaylene Webb) and Paul Graff (Banks Repetta)—became friends, connected by their hatred of Turkey (as they call it when it’s out of sight) and also by the kind of common interests the boys have on the brink of adolescence. Despite their rebellious bravery in the Turkey class, there is still something a bit childish in the way Johnny and Paul approach the world, and a gentle softness in the mannerisms of the young actors they play.

Johnny collects NASA mission patches and dreams of becoming an astronaut. Paul thinks the Beatles will be back together soon. He also tells Johnny – realistically rather than boasting – that his family is “obscenely rich”. This is not entirely true. Paul’s father, Irving (Jeremy Strong), is a boiler repairer. His mother, Esther (Anne Hathaway), is a home economics teacher and PTA employee who is considering running for the local school board. With the help of Esther’s parents (Anthony Hopkins and Tova Feldschuh), they send Paul’s older brother, Ted (Ryan Seal), to a private school, where Paul will eventually join him.

In a relatively short time—between the start of school and Thanksgiving, with Ronald Reagan elected in between—Paul will come to a clearer and harsher understanding of how power, prestige, and money work in America, a lesson that will come in Johnny’s Expense.

Johnny is black, Paul is white, and even as they travel around the world together, they experience it in different ways. Mr. Turkletop may punish both of them, but he is even more cruel to Johnny, calling him an “animal” and making fun of him in front of his peers. Johnny, who lives with his grandmother, is one of the school’s few black students, and their presence worries some of the ostensibly tolerant adults in the Paul family.

Interracial friendship is an ancient and complex topic in American culture. Think of Ishmael and Queequeg lying in Spouter-Inn in “Moby-Dick,” Huck and Jim on the Mississippi River in “Huckleberry Finn,” or Dylan and Mingus marking Brooklyn in Jonathan Lethem’s “The Fortress of Solitude.” In almost every case, the perception of the white character is central (these books are all first-person stories, and in a concrete if not literal sense, the “time of Armageddon” is too). The black character, no matter how brave, beautiful or tragic, is the instrument of moral vigilance for his companion.

“Armageddon Time” embeds itself in this tradition, but is also honest about the limits of its own perspective. Gray tells the story of Paul’s discovery of the sins of race and class, but he doesn’t claim that this painful knowledge could save him, let alone save Johnny.

Nor does the ruthlessness of American racism come as news — certainly not for Johnny, and not at the Graff house either. They are Jews whose rise to the American middle class overshadows generations’ memories of Cossacks and Nazis in the old world and brushes less lethal anti-Semitism in their new homeland.

The moral center of the clan is Esther’s father, Aaron, who especially loves Paul. It’s a gentle, fun, and educational presence in a boy’s life – Hopkins finds the intent hidden under a flash – dispensing gifts, jokes, and difficult nuggets of wisdom. It is a comforting presence for Paul, who is fearful of Irving’s violent temper and is at a critical stage in his relationship with Esther.

Gray’s filmography—who has directed and written eight features thus far, beginning with “Little Odessa” in 1995—can be understood as a series of inquiries about the meaning of home, which is usually somewhere in the outer boroughs of New York. Having ventured far away in his last two films (The Amazon in “The Lost City of Z” and outer space in “Ad Astra”), he has veered into a deeply personal area.

But although Paul Graf is the unmistakable alter ego, his situation is a version of the predicament faced by the young men played by Joaquin Phoenix in ‘We own the rights’ And the “Two lovers.” His curiosity may drive him toward rebellion, adventure, and taboo testing, but at the same time he’s involved in the warm, sticky feelings of familial commitment and tribal identity.

Gray explores the Graff family with a loving and critical eye. (The eye of director of photography, Darius Khunji, discovers the subtle colors of comfort and claustrophobia, and the subtle shades of nostalgia and regret.) A different filmmaker may have made Esther, Irving, and Aaron the embodiments of liberal hypocrisy. They despise Reagan and despise the weak. They also send Ted and Paul to a school that includes the Trump family as the main beneficiaries, and put toxic crumbs of bigotry in their conversation at their table.

But The Time of Armageddon is less concerned with cataloging their moral failings than with investigating the contradictions they inhabit, and the vortex of mixed messages and moral compromises that define Paul’s emerging sense of the world and his place in it. He hears a lot – including from a member of the Trump family – about hard work and independence, as well as about the importance of connections. He was told that the game was rigged against him, and that it was also rigged in his favour. He was directed to adapt and fight, follow his dreams and be realistic.

And Johnny? The messages he receives are much more brutal, though no less confusing. But what happened to him could only be guessed by Paul and the audience, for one of the lessons Paul learned was that his friend’s story was never his friend’s story.

Armageddon Time
Rated R. Bad vibes, bad behavior, bad language. Show duration: 1 hour 55 minutes. in theatres.