A coming-of-age drama about the strength of a Jewish family and the generational pursuit of the American dream is Directed by James Gray with Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, Jaylin Webb and Anthony Hopkins.
Inspired by Gray’s childhood experiences, the story follows a 6th grade, 12-year-old young Jewish boy Paul Graff ( Banks Repeta ) on his first day befriends a rebellious African-american classmate Johnny ( Jaylin Webb ) from a broken family and begins to struggle with expectations from his family and growing up in a world of privilege, inequality and prejudice in the 1980 Queens, NY He is very close with his grandfather Aaron Rabinowitz ( Anthony Hopkins ), who encourages him to pursue his aspirations of becoming an artist. His well-meaning parents, Esther( Hathaway ) and Irving (Jeremy Strong}, are less convinced by Paul’s career prospects to be an artist. At night, Aaron tells Paul the story of how Aaron’s mother escaped, fleeing before eventually immigrating with Ester to USA. Great performances with a strong plot and acting by all. Each of these fine actors give a very compelling real family characterization to support a convincing screenplay. The score, set design and costumes crystalline the somber backdrop of racial American landscape.The writing and direction is very good to encapsulate a taught script within a tight run time. That era resonates with the present day Trump US politics, even though the racial tensions have somewhat lightened up.