Which Sebastian Stan's Apprentice appearance gets completely right

Donald Trump is a difficult figure for Hollywood's imitators. His mannerisms are too bizarre to be mocked. He is too despicable to be penetrated by satire. For the past eight years, Trump impersonators have formed their mouths into duck lips and cut the air with limp hands to pin him down, and for most of the past eight years they have failed to land a punch.

The exaggeration of the caricature, the way it attempts to turn Trump into a cartoon character of himself, instead seems to turn him into an archetype. Perversely, it makes him superhuman, a chaotic force of nature that can neither be controlled nor stopped. Whenever I watch a Trump comedy sketch, no matter how petty or powerless their version of Trump is, I can't shake the feeling that it somehow helps him win.

The latest imitator to take on Trump is Sebastian Stan, who bravely dons prosthetics to play a young Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi's come-up The apprentice. Trump pairing Stan and Abbasi gives us few new insights into the man himself, but they manage to pull off something I've never seen before. The apprentice shows you Trump as a performance, a little unreal, a little scary, without ever feeling like it's losing points to Trump the man.

Stan builds up his Trump gradually, starting him off as a callous and insecure young man who, aside from his irritated chin, could be almost any 1970s New York nerd. As The apprentice Donald is in his late 20s and is trying to poach his father's tenants for rent in order to force his way into exclusive members-only clubs in Manhattan. His life changes when he finds himself in the crosshairs of Roy Cohn, the lawyer, fixer and historical monster, played here with reptilian panache by Jeremy Strong. Roy teaches Donald the dirty tricks that will help him penetrate the glitz and glamor of Manhattan's power centers so he can finally begin building his gilded towers.

When he first meets Roy, Stan's Donald loses his generic character and suddenly becomes someone who is clearly Donald Trump. Donald rumbles nervously about the Justice Department's lawsuit against his father for refusing to rent to black tenants, holds out his hands and declares, “I think it's a disgrace.”

You take a deep breath and cover your mouth with your hands. It's not like Alec Baldwin is impersonating Trump, or Sarah Cooper is lip-syncing Trump, or any of the late-night anchors are going into half-hearted Trump during their newscasts. Stan doesn't do Trump. He is Trump. And what defines Trump Trumpis complaint in this film. The first time he is recognized is the first time he starts complaining about how much injustice has happened to him.

Stans keeps impersonating Donald The apprentice Cataloging the ways in which he was sinned against. The city is against him because it is blocking his plan to revitalize the run-down downtown Manhattan by building a luxury hotel. His alcoholic brother is an embarrassment. His wife Ivana (played here by the likeable Maria Bakalova) is so bossy that she cheated him out of a real marriage. (Donald's eventual violent rape of Ivana, which occurs on screen, is probably the most controversial element of the film, but is based on Ivana's divorce statement.)

This is the heart of Trump, The apprentice argues: the feeling that the world owes him something better than what he has and that someone else is unfairly trying to withhold it from him. This belief drives him to reach out with greedy, grasping hands and take what he wants.

To say that Donald Trump is driven by resentment is not a new insight. The political press has long recognized that grievance is his most powerful political weapon: he appeals to his base by telling them that they are entitled to more than they are getting, and that someone (migrants, the woke, the coastal elite) preventing them from taking what is owed to them. The apprentice doesn't tell us anything particularly new with his portrait of Trump.

What it offers instead is the opportunity to make the tired old cliché feel viscerally true. As Donald, Stan's eyes glaze over until they are empty, hungry, and angry. He looks across a candlelit lounge at Roy Cohn and sees a hunger that matches his own, and you flinch. Nothing good can come from so much combined need.

It's also powerful to watch Trump learn to be Trump, to watch him build the persona that has caused so much trouble for our comedians. Something about watching Trump gradually adopt his now-familiar mannerisms, like a Bond villain putting on his disguise, makes the whole thing seem more worn than ever. As you know, Trump didn't just happen. he is not an immobile force of nature. He designed it himself. In The apprenticeMost of Trump's bluster comes from a kind of clumsy imitation of Roy Cohn, teaching him that he needs to cock himself up, think about his suits, and watch his “big ass.”

In the moral universe of The apprenticeRoy becomes more likeable than Donald because he is a real esthete. Roy parties with Warhol, fills his home with some of the most beautiful art of the 20th century, and starts every morning with a hundred sit-ups. He is a demon, but he is of the Mephistophelesian variety, with good taste.

In contrast, Donald emulates Roy by covering his mansion with kitschy rococo paneling and having liposuction. His aesthetic turns out to be a lot of gilding, an attempt to copy Roy's real-life snobbery without the style to back it up.

In the film's emotional climax, Donald brings the dying Roy to a party at Mar-a-Lago. Donald has imprisoned Roy since it became clear that his illness was AIDS, not liver cancer as he claimed, and his hold on power has faltered. Nevertheless, Donald seems to want to reconcile with his old friend and mentor before Roy dies. As a peace offering, he gives Roy cufflinks that he says are made of sterling silver, set with Tiffany diamonds and engraved with the Trump logo.

Touched, Roy shows Ivana the gift. She looks at him with pity and tells him that the cufflinks are made of pewter and cubic zirconia. They are cheap fakes with the name Trump. In response, Roy bursts into tears.

The real sting here isn't just that Donald lied to Roy on his deathbed, or that Donald so callously rejected the friend who took him from an outsider in the outskirts to a mover and shaker in Manhattan. It's that he does it with fake diamonds. He doesn't have the good taste to buy real jewelry. Everything he has to offer is hollow and false – everything except the sorrow that screams from his heart.

Now and again, The apprentice puts too much of a finger on the scales to see the connections between Donald's past and the dark, Trumpian present. In a shaky scene, Roger Stone brings Donald a “Let's Make America Great Again” button from the Reagan campaign and chats about his presidential ambitions. Donald says he doesn't want the job, but he would appreciate a blowjob on Air Force One. Do you get the joke?

Where The apprentice comes to life, yet is startlingly immersive. Towards the end of the film there is a breathtaking scene in which Donald, now heavier and balding, goes under the knife to have his fat removed and his scalp stapled. The camera moves from the slimy tube sucking fat from his stomach, over his contentedly dozing face, mouth open and jaw slack, to the back of his head, where his scalp has been cut open in the bald spot. Then it lingers there on the bloody, fleshy area and shows us the crude clamps that are supposed to preserve the Trumpian hairline.

To create the Trump image, to justify the Trump grievances – well, to achieve any of that requires body horror.