By Raghav Bali

Already hailed by famed critics (me) as this year’s Imitation Game, Trumbo is the biopic of the year so far, headed with a boisterous lead performance, tirelessly efficient storytelling and a timely message to boot. After conquering television and theatre as a leading man, Bryan Cranston has arrived at his first big leading role in a film with Trumbo, where he plays the eponymous American screenwriter who penned such classics as Roman Holiday and Spartacus. Unfortunately, his road to success was paved with intense persecution, betrayal and heartbreak, the basic formula for any moving biopic.

Trumbo places us right in the heart of the man himself, Dalton Trumbo, as he and his friends from the Communist Party are fervently pursued and and held in contempt of court by the House Un-American Activities Committee, who investigated the communist influences on the motion picture industry. Trumbo and his friends’ refusal to testify in court led to them being named ‘The Hollywood Ten’, being incarcerated in a federal penitentiary and subsequently blacklisted by the entire film industry. Many of the key players of this detailed story were icons of Hollywood that spoke for both sides of the debate, including John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Edward G. Robinson, extra film points if you can guess who was for and against the Commies.

If you’re a fan of character actors, then this may be the ensemble film of the century for you. The acting and casting is impeccable with staple film-nerd favourites like Stephen Root, John Goodman, Michael Stulhbarg disappearing into their roles, and Louis CK coming along for the ride, almost too similar to the Louis CK from Louie – except I guess this time he has a fedora. Helen Mirren holds her own as the conniving Hollywood gossip-columnist Hedda Hopper (an old timey Perez Hilton), who sought out to purge all and every ‘dirty Commie’. Surprise surprise, she’s also an anti-Semite. As you’re building all your hate towards Mirren, conversely you’ll be nurturing all your maternal love for Diane Lane and Elle Fanning as Trumbo’s wife and child, who breath life into these supporting characters with a couple of soulful, if sometimes underutilised, performances.

Of course at the end of the day, this film lives or dies with its lead. Without Cranston purposefully outshining everyone around him, it would have been easy for others to steal the show right from under him. But the story stays true to Trumbo’s life, his convictions and his failures. The last being the lasting and at times devastating effects on his political alliance on his family and friends – such is the life of a radical. Trumbo ends up evenly segmented into Trumbo’s pre-black list union leadership, his trials, conviction and incarceration and his ultimate redemption and un-blacklisting. The story rarely meanders into the uninteresting, even after solidifying every ally and enemy Trumbo had, leaving us with a streamlined life story and a much-deserved happy ending for the man.

Films about filmmaking are some of the toughest to pull off but they can be some of the most fun if done well. With Trumbo you get it all. Actors with splitting images of the actor they are playing (see John Wayne and Kirk Douglas), real life black and white documentary footage of Nixon, McCarthy and Kennedy interspersed seamlessly with film footage, clips of cinema audiences experiencing Roman Holiday and Spartacus for the first time. Sometimes due to it biopic nature and the film’s aim to please every last cinema fan or historian, you’ve get extra cinema lore, whether that be a mention of Kubrick being a pain the arse or the King Brother’s proclivity to producing easily sellable but rubbish films (their own words). Ultimately it all becomes a bit too by-the-numbers, tensionless and as many will tell you ‘Oscar-baity’.

Top notch set and costume design pepper Trumbo with everything it needs to look like an oldie but its sincere attitude and message on the importance of the freedom of speech give it everything to feel timely. So if you’re getting pumped about the rise of socialist leaders like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, Trumbo will give you plenty of fuel for that hype machine. It is brimming with witticism from all its characters and it will be hard not to grin from the sheer joy of the acting in it all. Bryan Cranston brings to life a screenwriting legend, a family man and an uncompromising leader with true finesse. No doubt he will be sharing the same Oscar fever Trumbo himself felt.