When one thinks of the qualities that best define James Gray, versatility is one of the more common terms we can use to describe him. A director who has successfully weaponised his refusal to develop a particular style, and instead pursued an identity based around his ability to work in a wide range of genres, he’s an artist who regularly makes interesting work, the nature of which we can never predict until he announces his next project. Whether working on a larger scope (in genres such as historical adventure and science fiction) or on a much smaller scale, which were the films that kickstarted his career, Gray is a very compelling and creative filmmaker whose talents make nearly every one of his films worthwhile. His most recent effort is also one of his most personal, with Armageddon Time being his version of a coming-of-age story, focusing on a character loosely based on the director himself, growing up in the early 1980s in New York City, which was undergoing quite a severe change as a result of the impending election of Ronald Reagan, which frames the film and gives it a sense of time and place. Gray has certainly made better films, which is something that should be stated from the start, and the closeness with the material here can sometimes be the film’s most severe shortcomings, especially when it is aiming to portray the journey of the main character as one that carries a much deeper meaning – but despite a few questionable choices, which we can attribute to an overestimation of the impact his perspective would have on the story, Armageddon Time is a fascinating document of a particular moment in American history, filtered through the eyes of a very unique protagonist, whose own observations interweave with the more sobering conversations to create a vibrant and compelling tapestry that has its imperfections, but offers enough valuable contributions to be worth our time, or at least a passable way to spend it revisiting the past through Gray’s own memories.

For about as long as cinema has been made, there have been directors and writers making films that are based on their lives to some degree, so it’s certainly not a new phenomenon. However, what has become a trend in recent years is for high-profile filmmakers to craft stories that are loosely based on their childhood, almost as if they are aiming to give us an insightful glimpse into their formative years, exploring the journey they took to becoming the artists who we adore and revere today. Gray contributes to this steadily growing canon of coming-of-age narratives with Armageddon Time, which takes its title from the song “Armagideon Time” by The Clash, which is the exact kind of gritty but poetic voice in which Gray seems to be intent on working. Considering the extent to which we’ve seen similar stories being told, there’s nothing necessarily revolutionary about what Gray is doing here, and to find the differences is essentially just a matter of splitting hairs, since this is about as formulaic as one of these films can get. Even without the preconceived notion that this story is somewhat based on the director’s childhood, it is still extremely clear that he’s drawing from a very conventional set of guidelines on how to craft a story of adolescence, especially one set at a particular moment in the past, which almost becomes as integral as the family dynamic that anchors the film, if not even more important. It’s almost disconcerting that Armageddon Time seems to be following such an orthodox, traditional structure – one would imagine that Gray would at least try and expand on some of the ideas in a way that is interesting and unique, which doesn’t seem to be the case here. If anything, the closeness he has to the story prevents him from taking any particularly daring risks, which ultimately leads to a film that is very touching and emotionally quite profound, but lacks the spark we’d expect from someone with the experimental approach that Gray has demonstrated in the past – it doesn’t disqualify Armageddon Time from being a good film, but it does preclude it from being a masterwork, which it could have easily have achieved with a more consistently daring approach, which was certainly not far out of reach for the film by any means.

If anything, the lack of focus on the familial dynamic does become something of an irreparable flaw for this film. There is too much effort put into capturing the social atmosphere, with the ambigious space between the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan being a very broad subject onto which the film places slightly too much attention. In the bluntest terms, Gray seems to be under the impression that telling a story about his family’s own biases and brief forays into light bigotry is an example of taking accountability and working through the own guilt he felt growing up in a white, middle-class environment, which is most notably reflected in the friendship he forms with a troubled black child, who is portrayed with an almost stereotypical approach, where he is either a force of disruption or revelation, being poorly developed in a way that was clearly accidental, since the director seemed to be deluded enough into thinking that showing some of these plot details drawn from his upbringing (such as offering his friend shelter in the shed in his backyard, for what appears to be an indeterminate amount of time, under the fear that his supposedly liberal parents were not progressive enough to welcome a child in need into their home) would allow for a raw and emotional experience. It’s not entirely awful, since there were good intentions – but by this point, artists should have more self-awareness in how their stories come across, especially when dealing with the intersections between economic status and race, which are not malleable enough to be subjected to the fumbling that occurs throughout the film. Once again, it’s a matter of good intentions being harmed by a lack of foresight, and a misalignment of morals and values by someone who genuinely thought what he was doing was progressive, when in reality it comes across as slightly smug and myopic. It’s barely enough to distract from the positive qualities, but it does feel like a more concise and self-aware approach may have elevated this film, the ideal version of which focuses more on the interesting qualities like the family and their experiences, rather than trying to shoehorn a message into a story that didn’t need it in the first place.

Mercifully, there are a few redeeming qualities that propel Armageddon Time and make it a more worthwhile experience than the criticisms levelled against it may suggest at a cursory glance. The cast is uniformly very good, with Gray assembling quite a formidable set of actors to portray the various characters in this semi-autobiographical parable. Banks Repeta portrays the young lead, and he is very good (although hardly a revelation – it seems like films of this nature are designed to be introductions to bright new talents, and he is decent enough to handle the material, but not enough to immediately demand our attention), tackling some of the more heady material with a lot of dedication. Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway play his parents, and commit fully to roles that are unfortunately quite one-dimensional in theory, but which are lifted considerably by their spirited performances that capture the full extent of what Gray may have experienced growing up with strict but loving parents that want the best for their child, but have to reconcile the fact that his ambitions are very different from what they envisioned for his future. The most well-developed character is unsurprisingly the role played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, who takes a relatively common archetype of the loving grandfather, and single-handedly commands the entire film, being given a role that seems much bigger than it actually is, which is both a testament to the fact that Gray wrote this character with a lot more reverence than he did with any of the others (likely because he seemed to have a closer connection with his grandfather than anyone else), and that Hopkins is quite simply one of the greatest actors in the English language, and could easily infuse any character he played with nuance, wit and complexity – if only the rest of the film followed his example, Armageddon Time would likely be a masterpiece.

I am hesitant to view Armageddon Time as a failure – this is a film with many intriguing ideas and a very unique way of exploring them, and despite the shoddy approach to a few of the more important themes, this is a film that situates itself within a very particular moment in time, and should be assessed as not a thorough examination of the social and cultural milieu of the era, but rather a single perspective, a vivid memory poem written and directed by someone reflecting on the past in meaningful ways. The downfall comes in the fact that Gray struggles to temper the tone and intentions, choosing to highlight the wrong qualities, and ignore those details that would be far more compelling had they been given the emphasis they deserved. Many gifted writers and critics have remarked on the film’s approach to race and identity, especially at this crucial moment in American history, in a lot of detail – those are the voices we should be reading, since they offer for more insightful commentary than I ever could. However, it doesn’t take too much intelligence or observation to notice that Armageddon Time had a lot of potentials that is lost in between layers of self-indulgent moralizing, which is masquerading as guilt-laden discussions on the plight of a young man and his middle-class family as they stand on the doorstep of a new era in the nation’s history. There is a great film to be found somewhere under the layers of social and cultural commentary, and we do see slivers of very effective, meaningful conversations throughout the film – it just becomes lost when we realize Gray is pursuing very different ideas to what many of us may expect, which can have quite a negative effect on our experiences with this story, which depends on our ability to forge a lasting relationship with these characters and their environment, which isn’t always possible when he isn’t giving us access to such vital information. Armageddon Time had potential, and it lives up to a fair bit of it – but it’s the elisions that make the biggest difference and prevent it from being nearly as effective as it could have been, which only dampens what could have been a powerful and personal statement by one of the most talented directors working today.