Trumbo, directed by Peter Askin, documents the life of Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten cited for UnAmerican Activites during the McCarthy Hearings of the late 1940’s. Being a victim of over-culturification myself, I am continuously caught off guard when a filmic gem rises up out of the ether, (in this case, Netflix Watch Instantly) and spades out a genius of both moral character and eloquence. Trumbo, born in Montrose Colorado in 1905, rose through the Hollywood ranks amongst the pre and post war writers, becoming the most sought after scenic alchemist of his generation, until, in 1947, he was indicted by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee on suspicion of his Communist affiliations.

Written by  Christopher Trumbo, Dalton’s son, Trumbo vacillates between documentary and family footage taken at the family ranch in Los Angeles, and orations of various letters, screenplays and essays read by a myirad of celebrities, paying tribute to the word wizardry of Dalton Trumbo. Described as anything buy agreeable, Trumbo was not one to back down from seemingly impervious odds. Subpoenaed to appear before the committee, Trumbo knew he was marching into losing battle, and yet, when pressed by congress to reveal his political affiliations, Dalton not only refused, claiming the 1st amendment, he insisted that the committee display to him any evidence of his Communist tendencies, or at the very minimum some amount of “just cause”, they declined. Held in contempt of court, Trumbo served 11 months in a Kentucky Federal Penitentiary as his official penance, however, the witch hunt resulted in the decimation of the careers and livelihoods of some 300+ artists, actors, directors and writers who would eventually stand charged as anti-American. Ironically, as the film points out, Trumbo was a patriot of the highest caliber, battling the voice of tyranny were ever it stood to gain something from the marginalization of its own people.

The letters of Dalton Trumbo, read throughout the film by various affiliated actors including Michael Douglas and Paul Giamatti, level out the political weight of the film by provided insights into the character of a man who believed in, and would do anything for his beloved family. One of the most striking of these letters is to his son, Christopher, for his fourteenth birthday. In it, Trumbo ironically communicates the perils and glorious necessity that masturbation is to a young man, raising it out of the gutter by the sheer leverage and articulation of an experienced soul, but pins it as the ineffable birth-right of his only son. The consonant language of this letter, read and performed by Nathan Lane, baffles the imagination, mixing hidden double and triple meanings which dissolve the self-consciousness of pubescence in an act of desperate communication and bravery from father to son.

“Trumbo” reveals a man unwilling to sacrifice his ardent beliefs for immediate grace from a tyrannical government, and in doing so, paints yellow those who would deflect the rights of an individual based on the fears of the many.