Trumbo * * * 1/2

A screen writer once told me that the greatest gift given unto his profession is the word processor, because no writer cuts and pastes and shifts things around more than a script writer when putting together a screenplay. They’ve always done it, even before word processors were invented.

In this film, which is about screen writer Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), there are many scenes where we see Trumbo with scissors and tape as he manually cuts and pastes and blocks the screenplay he is working on.  

But watching the main character at work is not the only reminder of how screenplays are put together. The film itself reminds us.  For as good as this film is, its own cutting and pasting is its one fault. It seems to be at pains to make sure everything is addressed. It’s like you can hear the input from the makers: “We need a scene to show this” and “We need a scene to show that” So said scenes have duly been cut and pasted and slotted in to make a whole.  Unfortunately a few of them only serve to make a black hole, in that they occasionally give us scenes and situations that don’t go anywhere, resulting in a film that sometimes comes across as constructed rather than born.

Having said that I should focus on the positive aspects of this film - of which there are many.

It is set in the fifties. Dalton Trumbo was a man greatly interested in civil rights and social justice. He had joined the Communist Party in the 1930’s. He didn’t have too much to do with them and just got on with building a career as a writer of screenplays at which he became hugely successful. Then McCarthyism reared it’s ugly head.  He and many others in Hollywood were hauled up and in the case of Trumbo he was jailed for contempt for refusing to answer questions.  He wasn’t the only one.  But rather than individually feature the other writers the film gives us a composite of them in a fictional single character ably played by Louie CK.  Actor Edward G Robinson also features well played by Michael Stuhlbarg. He paid by being boycotted by the industry.

There was a revolting magazine writer on all things Hollywood who hungered to see The McCarthy inquiry succeed, she is played by Helen Mirren (I didn’t know she could do bitchy so well); and John Goodman plays Frank King a loud and shonky (but likeable)  producer of B- Grade films. To keep food on the table whilst blacklisted  Trumbo worked for him for a while. Trumbo’s brave wife is played by Diane Lane.

This was a time when America was at its most embarrassingly unjust. What was happening to decent people was madness.  It was indeed a witch hunt.  And a worthless one. As we know, eventually American democracy was robust enough to rid itself of this scourge. After having written under pseudonyms for years Dalton Trumbo returned under his own name to write Spartacus and Exodus with admirable support from Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.

Although these critical events are all included, and there is much fine dialogue, for some reason in Trumbo we see things rather than feel them.  Somehow or another it seems to lack heart for most of the time. It acts out emotional scenes but it is rare we actually empathise. Other than in the moving closing scenes, fear, sadness and elation mostly seem to be there for us to witness rather than share.

Trumbo strikes me as a noble effort but one that might not be remembered for long.  
If Dalton Trumbo was still alive he’d have probably insisted on another draft to bring out more emotion - especially if he knew they had these darn things called word processors!