Armageddon Time

My nephew really wanted to see Armageddon Time so I took him to see it last night.  I enjoyed this coming of age story about racism, guilt, and white privilege but the ambiguous ending kept it from being great (my nephew was even more disappointed with the ending than I was).  It is 1980 in Queens and it is the first day of school for Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a young Jewish boy with middle class parents, Esther (Anne Hathaway) and Irving (Jeremy Strong), and immigrant grandparents, namely Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins), who all want a better life for him.  He befriends a Black student named Johnny (Jaylin Webb) and they both cause mischief in class but Paul notices that Johnny seems to be punished more severely.  After the two of them get caught smoking marijuana in the bathroom, Paul's parents decide to send him to an expensive prep school to get him away from Johnny.  Paul tries to fit in at his new school but he is dismayed by his classmates' comments about Black people and feels guilty for not defending his friend.  Eventually, the two of them get in trouble with the law but Paul is able to escape the consequences while Johnny is not even though Paul is to blame.  His father tells him that life is not fair and he should take advantage of the opportunity to learn from his mistake but he also remembers his grandfather's advice to always stand up to prejudice when he sees it.  The performances are amazing, especially Repeta and Hopkins (they have a scene together that is absolutely brilliant), the production design is very effective at evoking the time and place (my family had the exact same dishes in the 1980s) without a lot of the nostalgia attendant upon most movies that depict this era, and the story is very compelling.  Watching everything that happens to Johnny was incredibly emotional for me, especially sitting next to my nephew, and I was most invested in him as a character.  I was, therefore, disappointed in the ending because I feel like Johnny just disappears after having done his part to teach Paul a lesson about the injustices of the world.  I wanted Paul to learn a bigger lesson and finally, at long last, stand up for Johnny.  That may not be the story that James Gray is telling but I can't deny that I left the theater a bit deflated despite my overall enjoyment of the movie.