Trumbo

Peter Askin's documentary about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976)—once Hollywood's highest-paid scribe, and an Oscar winner to boot (for Roman Holiday and The Brave One)—soft-pedals the talented wordsmith's openly defiant Communist party affiliation while making him seem like a martyr to free speech (Trumbo declared that he loathed and distrusted democracies, and vociferously defended authoritarian rule). Witty and irascible, Trumbo exiled himself and his family to Mexico after his run-in with the notorious witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (and his subsequent imprisonment for contempt of Congress), but would later win renewed respectability for his screenplays for Spartacus and Exodus. Hardly an objective documentary (the film is based on a play by Trumbo's son Christopher), Trumbo glosses over its subject's most provocative and inflammatory positions, uses archival footage in service of questionable assertions (including the suggestion that WWII-era Japanese-American internment camps were originally intended for radical left-wingers), and makes patently ironic claims (if Trumbo always “stood up for what he believed in,” why did he decline to answer HUAC interrogators?). What does work well here, however, is the decision to have actors such as Nathan Lane, Paul Giamatti, and Liam Neeson “performing” powerful passages from Trumbo's letters. More hagiography than biography, this is still a strong optional purchase. (E. Hulse)