Filmmakers, the better ones, don’t make movies about their childhoods because they know how they feel about what happened. They do it because they’re trying to figure it out in hindsight, with a camera.
In “Armageddon Time,” writer-director James Gray revisits his 12-year-old state of mind in this semi-autobiographical depiction of a working-class Jewish family living in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York. The year is 1980. Reagan’s America glows on the horizon, even as Reagan gives stump speeches about imminent nuclear Armageddon only he can prevent.
The film begins on the first day of sixth grade in P.S. 173. Two cut-ups, Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) and, sitting at the back of the class, Johnny Crocker (Jaylin Webb), waste little time in provoking their congenitally hostile teacher. The man is also a barely disguised racist, muttering “animal” after Johnny — a Black kid living in precarious circumstances with his ailing grandmother — wins the astonished admiration of Paul. “Armageddon Time,” its title taken from the Clash song “Armagideon Time” off the “London Calling” single, charts the beginning and the end of the boys’ friendship.
