‘Armageddon Time’ Film Review: James Gray Looks at His Childhood Without Nostalgia
thewrap.comKenneth Branagh’s childhood was transformed by the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Mike Mills had very eccentric parents and Cameron Crowe was a teenage rock critic — and we know these things because all three directors have made films that drew upon their own childhoods.
And now it’s James Gray’s turn to offer his own look back with “Armageddon Time,” which premiered to a rousing ovation in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.And what does the film tell us about the young Gray?
For starters, he was a dreamer, he was a brat, he didn’t understand the privileges he was born into and he went on his own path.
In other words, he was the kind of person who just might grow up to make one of the least sentimental entries in what has typically been a seriously sentimental genre of film, and one of the least nostalgic examples of a form that is almost by definition nostalgic.Gray is hard on himself in “Armageddon Time”; Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), the film’s stand-in for the director as a sixth grader, is never cute, unless you want to dote on the angelic curls and ignore the purposefully stubborn personality.
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