If you’ve been reading any of my Cannes reviews up to this point, you’ve probably heard my common observation: “More of the same.” This year’s main competition lineup was chock-full or returning faces, and for the most part, these faces returned with more or less the same expression—piercing or amusing as it may be—that we’ve come to expect. Park gave us exactly what you’d expect from Park. Mungiu did the same. Östlund, Hansen-Løve, Kore-eda, Denis, Cronenberg, the Dardennes; most of them may have resurfaced with some great work (for a select few of them, among their best, even), but nobody watching these films would hail any of them as a breath of fresh air for their lauded craftspeople. So what do you get when the chief craftsman already has an eclectic enough filmography as it is? To answer that, you’d need to look towards James Gray, who feels just as comfortable recounting intimate tales of immigration as he does daunting odysseys of space exploration, all with little threading them together but some consistently hazy lighting and a relatively distant perspective.

In some sense, Armageddon Time does come across as a change of pace for the already-versatile Gray, in that his distanced view is narrowed down to his own childhood. In the growing space of directorial youth self-portraits, Armageddon Time distinguishes itself via Gray’s decision to reflect on his past with a bit more coldness than one might expect. By that token, I guess this is more of the same from Gray too, but the setting through which he applies this frigid lens makes for an effective contrast with the expected fondness one shows for their formative years. The end result is a film that acknowledges its characters’ privilege with some noted objectivity, rather than simply being another fluffy tale about how movies shaped his childhood during historical moments of strife. 

In the case of Armageddon Time, the historical moment of strife is New York on the cusp of the Reagan Era—a perceived period of American prosperity—which should already tell you plenty about the singularity of Gray’s tale of youthful self-discovery. The self-discovery being made is one of compassion and bleak disdain for the system in which some forms of marginalization are given societal priority over others once a group reaches a certain level of affluence. Gray presents this not so much as blatant hypocrisy, but more as a sense of obliviousness, in which our instinct for survival—literal or social—hinges on most of us taking whatever leg-up we can find in the world, while often (consciously or not) looking down on others who try to do the same. 

The other running theme from Cannes this year seems to be competent child performances, but for all of Gray’s refreshing poignancy, what can be for Hirokazu Kore-eda or Mia Hansen-Løve can unfortunately not quite be said for him. Michael Banks Repeta and Jaylin Webb aren’t particularly poor performers (Webb, as the older of the two, clearly has his own privilege over his co-star in that sense, at least), but Repeta’s flat line delivery doesn’t do justice to his more compelling nonverbal moments. But surrounding these two novices is a bevy of seasoned pros who all make the most of what little time their peripheral roles demand. Anne Hathaway is expectedly solid, Hopkins takes the lovable grandpa role and (big surprise) sets it to new heights, and Jeremy Strong does an admirable Ray Romano impression.

Through it all, the focus on reconciling the blatant horrors of the past with the ignored horrors of the present gives everyone, both onscreen and watching, plenty to ponder with Armageddon Time. It’s easy to come out of this thinking James Gray’s message is “use the privilege you have,” but I think the matters of desire and necessity should be distinguished. That much Gray leaves for us to determine.

2022 Ranked.

Cannes 2022.
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