Armageddon Time
Armageddon Time
RT Features, MadRiver Pictures, Keep Your Head, Spacemaker Productions
Focus Features, Universal Pictures
Release dates
May 19, 2022 (Cannes)
October 28, 2022
Description
ARMAGEDDON TIME is a deeply personal story on the strength of family, the complexity of friendship, and the generational pursuit of the American Dream.
Directed by
James Gray
Written by
James Gray
Produced by
Anthony Katagas, Marc Butan, Rodrigo Teixeira, Gustavo Debs, Marco Túlio Kehdi and James Gray
Starring
Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff
Anne Hathaway as Esther Graff
Jeremy Strong as Irving Graff
Anthony Hopkins as Aaron Graff
Jaylin Webb as Johnny
Ryan Sell as Ted Graff
Tovah Feldshuh as Mickey Graff
Dane West as Topper Lowell
Andrew Polk as Mr. Turkeltaub
Richard Bekins as Headmaster Fitzroy
Jacob MacKinnon as Edgar Romanelli
Domenick Lombardozzi
John Diehl as Fred Trump
Jessica Chastain as Maryanne Trump
Cinematography
Darius Khondji
Edited by
Scott Morris
Music by
Christopher Spelman
Director James Gray discusses Armageddon Time
History and myth always begin in the microcosm of the personal. With ARMAGEDDON TIME, I strove to make the most intimate and clear-eyed movie I possibly could. I wanted to liberate the story from the trappings of genre and to remove any barriers to sincerity. Above all, I wanted to be truthful. I remember that I wrote four words on a piece of cardboard, taped to the camera as my constant reminder: “Love. Warmth. Humor. Loss.” And in this film, loss took on many different forms.
The American Dream always figured prominently in the story my family liked to tell about itself. We didn’t buy many of the empty bromides, but we believed wholeheartedly in the arc of the greater narrative. My parents felt they were wise enough to separate myth from fact, but I watched them struggle with the limitations inherent in a system built on the fallacy of a classless society. The world demanded compromise of my family. In the end, we did the best we could, but sometimes, it just wasn’t enough. Our privilege was both real and fraught.
This is a movie about a moment in time, a moment in the past that reflects where we are today. I love the people in this story. They are all ghosts now.
Anne Hathaway discusses Armageddon Time
I remember my first reaction was one of great tenderness. Knowing James’s strength as an emotional and visual storyteller, I could see how he could turn this deeply personal script into a touching and challenging film. It was a personal narrative set within an historically significant moment in New York and America, and I very much wanted to be a part of it.
I wanted to be familiar with the world Esther would have grown up in, as well as the world in which her parents grew up.
She sees a path for her family’s rise, but it’s precarious. We meet her at a moment in her life when her idealism, that has sustained her through some hard times, meets a reality that will not accommodate her hopes. I saw in her a woman of tremendous passion, focus, determination, vulnerability, sadness, and love.
Esther and Paul ‘get’ each other. Of everyone in the family, outside of her father, Paul is the one she gets on with the best — he makes her laugh the hardest, but he also knows how to get under her skin. She’s scared he won’t find his place in this world, and him being safe and protected is her number one concern.
Jeremy Strong discusses Armageddon Time
I think James is brilliant and really regard him as one of the great contemporary filmmakers. There are a handful of directors I’ve always wanted to work with and he’s one of them. Then I read the script and was floored by it. It’s rare to read something that has a doubling effect, of being at once intimate and historical. It’s about this boy and his parents and this moment in time, in this particular neighborhood, in this particular house in Queens – but it’s the origin story of an artist and it’s the origin story of this historical epoch that we’re living in now. And Irving was one of those roles that sort of sang off the page.
There was a lot to absorb – who he was and what he liked; what music he listened to and what his interests were. James and I went around Queens and I got to sort of take a tour of James’s world. And I just plied him with a million questions, trying to get a composite picture of his father in order to internalize some of it and then throw it away. And not do an impersonation of James’s father, but try to understand the essence of the man.
He’s a product of a different generation and had a very difficult upbringing. He’s got a temper; there’s a sort of pressure cooker inside of him. He’s trying to support the family. He wants his kids to have a shot at an easier and bigger life than he’s had. I think it’s hard for him to be close to people. But he has very warm moments and I think he’s trying. And we discover wellsprings of love and generosity in a character that seems very limited in those areas.
Anthony Hopkins discusses Armageddon Time
I'd seen quite a number of James Gray's films, and I think there are so many layers about family relationships within his films. He's a very clever director; a very precise director. To do a film about a family in this part of America was intriguing to me.
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