Set!

The dinner table can be a serious business.

(2021) Documentary (Discovery Plus) Bonnie Overman, Marie Schoenfelder, Christel Schoenfelder, Hilarie Moore, Tim Wyckoff, Crystal Young, Rich Young, Ron Lew, Janet Lew, Cheryl Van Der Heller, Ginnie Miller, Sandra R. Courtney. Directed by Scott Gawlick

There are competitions for everything, from solving crossword puzzles to driving monster trucks to seeing whose frog can jump the farthest. If something can be done, sooner or later human nature will develop a contest for it.

That extends to mundane, everyday tasks as well. Take setting the table, for example. You know, the job your mom made you do when dinner was ready – and one you probably only did grudgingly, at that. You’re probably wondering why people would set tables on purpose. Didn’t they invent children to cover that?

Well, you wouldn’t send a child to decorate these tables. They are elaborate affairs, heavily themed and essentially works of art. There is also a great deal of skill involved; the silverware must be arranged properly and be the proper distance from the plates. Missing by a fraction of an inch can make the difference between winning nothing and winning Best in Show – the highest honor.

Don’t ever say that to Bonnie Overman. She is the Michael Jordan of table setting, having won more Best in Show ribbons than anyone. Her competitors look at her as a rival who can potentially win any competition she enters. The one she’s working on now is for the Orange County Fair in California, near where she lives. There are two themes; travel, and illumination. Bonnie chooses travel, and staying true to her love of cinema, she themes her table to Out of Africa. The OC Fair also gives ribbons out in the two themes for First Place, Second Place and Honorable Mention. There are no cash prizes; these women compete for ribbons and honor.

Did I say women? Well, while most of the competitors are women middle-aged and older, there is at least one man in the competition; Tim Wyckoff, who is also a cosplay enthusiast, but currently unemployed and living with his mom. He is doing a table based on Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go on a very strict budget – you see, some of the women spend thousands of dollars on their tables. Recent immigrant Janet Lew decorates her tables with items she’s picked up from her travels around the world, including a chandelier. Defending champion Crystal Young – the only one in the cast competing in the illumination category – is taking a chance on doing the tried-and-true barn setting to follow the overall theme of the Fair. However, nobody is taking as much of a chance as Hilarie Moore, who looks on these competitions as art installations and she likes to make a point with her art. She uses the travel theme, for example, to protest poaching in Africa and creates a setting compete with taxidermy animals, blood-soaked sand and animal bones. Bon appetit.

Your reaction to these and other contestants who are profiled may depend on your tolerance for obsessive behavior. Some will find them to be fascinating, interesting people with an unusual hobby; others will see them as women (and men) fiercely desperate for recognition, regardless of for what it is being received. Still others will see them as people with way too much time on their hands. Of course, I’m not one to talk; each one of these reviews you read requires somewhere in the neighborhood of five to eight hours of work apiece, from watching the movie to doing research on it, to finally writing, editing and posting the review on the site, multiplied by one review just about every day. We all have our obsessions.

For the most part, Gawlick himself is non-judgmental. He lets the various subjects tell their own story, leaving it up to the viewer to decide what they think, which is pretty admirable when you think about it. Most documentaries have a definite opinion about their subjects and aren’t afraid to express it; Gawlick treats his subjects with respect, which some might argue is more than they deserve. In all honesty, I was a bit gob-smacked by their dedication at first, but as time went by I began to see them a bit more clearly; at the end of the day, these are people who have found an outlet to express themselves, and it sure beats staring at a phone screen all day clicking on “like” buttons. In any case, you’re more likely to find their stories compelling than not, so why not give it a look-see?

REASONS TO SEE: Manages to hold your attention even though you know it shouldn’t.
REASONS TO AVOID: These are the REAL real housewives of Orange County.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and a couple of disturbing images.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Those who participate in these competitions refer to it as “tablescaping.”
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Discovery Plus
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/15/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Wordplay
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: The Monkey King: Reborn

Advertisement

Krimes

The King of Krimes.

(2021) Documentary (MTV Films) Jesse Krimes, Jared Owens, Russell Craig, Gilberto “Cano” Rivera, Cindy Krimes, Robyn Buseman, Asia Johnson, Michelle C. Jones, Courtney Cone, Daniel McCarthy Clifford, Sherrill Roland, Nicole Fleetwood, Julie Courtney, Jasmine Heiss, Peg Krimes. Directed by Alysa Nahmias

 

We all make mistakes when we’re young. Most are of the variety that harm nobody but ourselves, although occasionally we break the hearts of others who don’t deserve to have their hearts broken. Sometimes, young people make worse mistakes and the consequences of those errors in judgment have them ending up in prison.

Jesse Krimes (if ever there was an appropriate name for a convict!) is one such young man. Raised by a single mom, he showed a knack for creativity and artistic design. He ended up going to Millersville College and getting an art degree there. However, by then he had begun to party a bit too hard and got into trouble, finally being arrested and convicted for possession of cocaine with intent to sell. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

While in prison, he met Jared Owens and Gilberto Rivera, both of whom were artists in prison. He also found out that his girlfriend was pregnant (she would give birth to his son while he was incarcerated). Suddenly realizing that he was in danger of becoming the kind of absent father that had haunted his own childhood, he vowed to go the straight and narrow and through Owens and Rivera, began to find his own artistic voice. He began work on a mural that was too large to fit into any space in the prison, and knowing that it would be confiscated as contraband (particularly since he was using prison sheets for his canvas), he mailed them out and wouldn’t see the completed work as a whole until after he was released, a year early.

He did get a job with a public works project in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (his home town) where he met Russell Craig, a fellow ex-con artist. Staying clean and sober was no easy task; it was difficult for him to find work and financial pressures were leading him to making some old mistakes. One night, after drinking too much, he teetered out of a bar and almost literally into the arms of a police officer. He spent an agonizing night in jail, thinking that everything he’d built was going to fold like an accordion and he would be sent back to prison. However, his parole officer saw something in him and he was allowed to remain outside. The pressure of knowing that the slightest mistake would send him back into prison for a much longer stint hung over him like the sword of Damocles.

But his art began to get noticed and soon he began to sell some of his work, and put together shows. He became an activist for fixing the broken criminal justice system, for the rights of ex-cons and for rehabilitation through art. He began to be the father to his boy that his own father had never been to him.

Krimes is a compelling subject. He’s a handsome man, resembling professional wrestler Chris Jericho slightly. He’s also humble and accountable for the errors in judgment he’s made in his life. He also loves being a dad and it’s clear watching him and his son together that he is a good father.

Some look at the prison system as simply a vehicle to punish those who have done wicked things. Others see it as an opportunity to rehabilitate those who turn to crime. Most of us agree that the system isn’t working the way it is supposed to, fulfilling neither goal effectively. Many ex-cons end up returning to crime because every other door is closed to them. That doesn’t sound like a particularly efficient system to me.

Krimes is, while a fairly standard documentary/biography, noteworthy in that while it recognizes its subject as a flawed human being, also celebrates the beauty he has created (and his artwork really is wonderful). He’s a man who has recognized that he has been given a second chance and intends to make the most of it and if that isn’t something admirable, well, it should be.

REASONS TO SEE: A compelling story about overcoming the odds.
REASONS TO AVOID: Fairly typical documentary tropes.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some adult themes and drug content.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Krimes and Craig co-founded the Right to Return Fellowship with the Soze Agency, funded by the Open Philadelphia Project, to assist ex-convict artists.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: DOC NYC Online (through November 28)
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/17/21: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Big Eyes
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Omara

Tove

Art and literature collide.

(2020) Biographical Drama (Juno) Alma Pöysti, Krista Kosonen, Shanti Roney, Joanna Haartti, Kajsa Ernst, Robert Enckell, Jakob Öhrman, Eeva Putro, Wilhelm Ehckell, Liisi Tandefelt, Emma Klingenberg, Juhana Ryynänen, Henrik Wolff, Dick Idman, Simon Häger, Kira-Emmi Pohokari, Sanna Langinkoski, Saga Sarkola, Jon Henriksen, Lydia Taavitsainen. Directed by Zaida Bergroth

 

European readers are more likely to recognize the Moomins,( hippopotamus-like characters who live in a strange and magical world called Moominland and were something like the Smurfs) than American readers, although some might. Fewer Americans still would be acquainted with their author, Tove Jansson, a Swede living in Finland.

Tove was born to a Bohemian family whose patriarch, Victor (Enckell) was a well-known sculptor, his wife Signe (Ernst) a graphic artist. Tove is trained to be a painter, but she seems more comfortable following in her mother’s footsteps, despite her father’s insistence that anything other than painting would be beneath her talents. Already somewhat well-known for drawing cartoons lampooning Hitler during the era of Quisling, she has a sprightly personality that really recognizes no boundaries other than those she imposes on herself.

She initiates an affair with socialist politician Atos Wirtanen (Roney) who happens to be married. She attends parties, often taking shots at the bourgeoisie of Finnish society. She pays her rent with paintings that she promises will increase in value once she becomes famous (although her fame came in a different media than she thought she was going to be).

Then she meets Vivica Bander (Kosonen), a theatrical director who is the daughter of Helsinki’s mayor – and also married herself – who challenges her “Have you ever kissed a girl?” As it turns out, Tove hasn’t but she’s never one to turn down a challenge and before you can say “Teemu Selanne” the two are having a torrid affair. And along the way, we get to see the birth of Toe’s most famous creations, and the elements of their personalities that came straight out of Tove’s life (well, we sorta do anyway). But Vivica isn’t ready to commit to being with Tove; will she accept being a second banana in her romantic relationships forever?

This is a sumptuously filmed biopic by veteran Finnish director Bergroth, with gorgeous production design by Catharina Nyqvist Ehrnrooth. Tove’s studio is a near-perfect reproduction of her actual studio, which can be seen online in photographs. The soundtrack largely utilizes jazz, big band and mambo/tango tunes from European bands and is absolutely delightful.

Pöysti does a credible job capturing Tove’s pixie-esque personality. As an added grace note, we see the real Tove dancing joyously on the island retreat taken in super-8 footage by her real-life partner Tuulikki Pietilä (who makes only a brief appearance near the end of the film, played by Joanna Haartti) who, although scarcely mentioned in this film, spent most of her life with the Moomin creator which I thought was a bit odd, but then, Tove did nothing conventionally. Why should her biopic?

REASONS TO SEE: Superb production design. Nifty soundtrack.
REASONS TO AVOID: Kinda slow through the middle third.
FAMILY VALUES: There is sexual content, nudity and a whole lot of smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The official submission of Finland for Best International Film for the 2021 Oscars.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/4/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 92% positive reviews; Metacritic: 65/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Miss Potter
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Saint Judy

Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts

Art that evokes the primal side of man.

(2021) Documentary (Kino Lorber) Bill Traylor, Sharon Washington, Jason Samuels Smith, Richard Oosterom, Greg Tate, Russell G. Jones, Charles Shannon, Dr. Howard O. Robinson, Radcliffe Bailey, Leslie Umberger, Roberta Smith. Directed by Jeffrey Wolf

 

Bill Traylor is a name that may not register with the average American unless the average American happens to be an art lover – most average Americans aren’t, however. Traylor was born into slavery in Alabama back in 1853. Following Emancipation, he became a sharecropper and supported his growing family as a farmer – he was practical enough to grow edible crops rather than cotton, although he grew a lot of that as well.

He was also a bit of a drinker and a carouser; his marriages were dotted with infidelity on his part, fathering children by many different lovers. In his 80s, he was no longer able to work on a farm and so moved to Montgomery, where he was homeless off and on and supplemented his relief checks with drawings he made on found paper.

His work has been called “beautifully simple,” “primitive” and “powerful,” all of which are accurate. In many ways his drawings are reminiscent of the cave drawings that were drawn tens of thousands of years ago. His pictures are vibrant, full of movement and capture the era of slavery and the Jim Crow South.

We are treated to art experts discussing his work and its significance, black artists who discuss his lasting influence on African-American art, and his descendants who regale us with anecdotes about his colorful life. Actors read relevant passages from writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes and tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith adds motion and sound to the interpretation of his work. All of this is set to a magnificent blues soundtrack.

The problem with the film is that it is often extraordinarily dry, playing like it was meant for an advanced art history course at an Ivy League school. There are a lot of talking heads which when given the vibrancy of the art that we’re shown seems a bit counterintuitive.

It is the artwork that is the center of the film and Wolf takes great pains to show us as much of it as he is able. We are given artistic insights into the work; arguing couples are shown pointing in different directions, animals are totems that are predators in some cases, observers in others. The color blue represents the blues. It’s hard to believe that Traylor accomplished all of this with scraps of cardboard and paper, pencils and children’s poster paint, but he did.

Sadly, much of his work was discarded years after his death and presumably has been lost forever, although some hold out hope that it may surface in an Alabama landfill someday. There are still several hundred pieces of his work available and there is no denying its power and pull to the human spirit. If you’re going to see one documentary about an artist this year, this is the one to catch.

REASONS TO SEE: The artwork is as compelling as it’s creator. Wonderful blues soundtrack.
REASONS TO AVOID: Occasionally becomes overly dry with too many tallking heads.
FAMILY VALUES: There are descriptions of horrific violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Traylor preferred to work with scraps of paper he found in the trash rather than clean sheets of paper that admirers would give him; he would work the imperfections in the scraps into the artwork.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Virtual Cinema
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/13/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews; Metacritic: 80/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Maya Angelou And Still I Rise
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Two Gods

Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful

Newton’s Teutonic sensibility of beauty is both cold and sexy.

 (2020) Documentary (Kino Lorber) Helmut Newton, Grace Jones, Anna Wintour, Isabella Rossellini, Charlotte Rampling, June Newton, Hanna Schygula, Catherine Deneuve, Marianne Faithfull, Claudia Schiffer, Sylvia Gobbel, Phyllis Posnick, Carla Sozzoni, Nadja Auermann. Directed by Gero von Boehm

 

Helmut Newton is often described in terms of being a provocateur, an enfant terrible, the King of Kink, as Anna Wintour, the doyenne of Vogue magazine and one of his main employers, dubbed him. His photographs were often controversial, but always memorable.

He was born in Germany and grew up there during the age of the Weimar Republic, whose aesthetic influenced his work to a large extent. The rise of the Nazi party and their depiction of the human form (he admired Leni Riefenstahl’s work in Olympia although he bristles at the thought that she was an influence, seeing as he was Jewish and ended up fleeing Germany with his family). His was an essentially Teutonic aesthetic.

At the time he was working (he passed away in a car accident in Los Angeles in 2004 at the age of 83) he was recognized as an artist, an influence on how women were photographed (for better or for worse). Seen through the lens of 2020, perhaps we are less kind to him; often his pictures depicted women nude, and they were nearly always white (Grace Jones, the Jamaican singer, was one of the few exceptions), blonde, tall and statuesque. Often, they were posed in bondage gear, or in demeaning poses – there was often an element of S&M to his oeuvre – and his models often glared defiantly at the camera, a cigarette dangling petulantly from lips heavily painted with lipstick, smoke wreathing the lower part of their jaw.

His work hasn’t aged well in the sense that we are a different culture now; even though his portraiture depicted women as being strong and in control in most  occasions (and many of his models interviewed here said that even posing butt naked they felt safe and strong when posing for him) but many consider him a misogynist; certainly feminist Susan Sontag, who appeared with him on a French talk show (shown here) pointedly made the accusation, which he denied. “I love women” he protests, to which she responds “That doesn’t impress me. Misogynists always say they love women. Executioners love their victims.”

I suppose I would agree with the criticisms, except that nobody seems to be criticizing Robert Mapplethorpe, a contemporary, for shooting men in the same manner. There is a double standard here, reversed. There are those who say that it’s about time; as my mother might say, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Von Boehm, a veteran of German television, chooses not to make this a biography; Newton himself jokes during one of his archival interviews that “photographers are boring…if you want to know all that (details about his life and influences), I’m saving that for someone who has a lot more money than you.” Like many artists, he prefers to let his work speak for itself.

We mostly hear from the women in his life – his wife June (mostly in audio clips), Wintour, gallery curator Carla Sozzoni and a host of women who posed for him over the years; Jones, actresses Charlotte Rampling, Isabella Rossellini, Catherine Deneuve and Hanna Schygula, models Claudia Schiffer, Nadja Auermann and Sylvia Gobbel, and singer Marianne Faithfull. Most of them praise the photographer, although Jones admits with her typical candor “He was a pervert. That’s good; so am I.”

The film is hagiographic in that it really doesn’t address the criticisms – valid as they are – about his depiction of women. His wife describes him as a “naughty boy who grew up to be an anarchist” which is about as close to a description of who he was as you are likely to get. The filmmakers seem to be trying to allow the viewer to develop their own opinions about his work, but there isn’t enough of an opposing viewpoint to allow for an informed opinion. The images of Newton’s work are all that is offered, in the end, to consider and there is definitely an artistic vision at work here. Whether you believe it is art or misogyny is going to depend on you.

REASONS TO SEE: The images are compelling.
REASONS TO AVOID: Not really biographical so much as an exhibition of his work.
FAMILY VALUES: There is lots of nudity, some sexuality and a fair amount of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Newton’s ashes are interred three plots down from Marlene Dietrich in Berlin.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Virtual Cinematic Experience
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/1/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 65% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Times of Bill Cunningham
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Opus of an Angel

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski

The lion in winter.

(2018) Documentary (Netflix) Stanislav Szukalski, Glenn Bray, Robert Williams, Ernst Fuchs, George Di Caprio, Jose Israel Fernandez, Suzanne Williams, Ben Hecht, Karen Mortillaro, Pyotr Rypsin, Lena Zwalve, Adam Jones, Gabe Bartalos, James Kagel, Timothy Snyder, Marek Hapon, Adam Jones, Charles Schneider, Sandy Decker, Natalia Fabian, Rebecca Forstadt. Directed by Ireneusz Dobrowolski

 

It would be understandable if you hadn’t heard of Stanislav Szukalski. Even within the art world, his work is largely unknown these days, which is a shame – his talent and imagination are undeniable. However, the Polish-born artist’s case is not easy to contemplate.

Much of his work was destroyed during the Second World War; all that is left is conceptual drawings that he made. Following the war, he emigrated to the United States and lived in the quiet Los Angeles suburb of Granada Hills until he passed away in 1987. Late in life, underground comic artists like Glenn Bray, Robert Williams and R. Crumb discovered him; some of Szukalski’s drawings appeared in the latter’s Weirdo.

Bray, a collector of Szukalski’s art and a close personal friend (he ended up the executor of his will), taped hundreds of hours of interviews with the artist which remain the only recorded footage of him. It gives the portrait of a man who was often maddeningly arrogant, highly opinionated and occasionally sweet.

But there’s a dark side to Szukalski, one that was unearthed during the making of this documentary and one which even his closest friends weren’t aware of. The revelations change the nature of the documentary from a straightforward biography to something with a much more urgent issue that we continue to grapple with in the age of #MeToo – is an artist separate from his work? Can we love a Woody Allen movie and deplore his actions? Can we love Chinatown and censure Roman Polanski?

That’s what his friends have to come to terms with. Some, like Bray, remain loyal to the old man they knew; Bray contends that Szukalski was a changed man when he knew him and there is evidence that Szukalski was anxious to make amends. However, others such as Di Caprio are not so sure that some of the actions of the artist can be forgiven and we also have to consider the legacy of those actions; in his native Poland, Szukalski has been adopted as a figurehead by far-right extremists, even though Szukalski himself would point out that his work was meant to illustrate the common themes of mankind through his philosophy of Zermatism, which has come down to us thanks to the Church of the Sub-Genius which purloined some of the concepts as their own.

Szukalski used the art forms and mythologies of other cultures to help him explore Poland’s identity, and there’s no doubt that the art is powerful and expressive. But considering his state of mind when he created some of this work, can it be trusted? The filmmaker leaves it to you to answer that for yourself but I can’t help but wonder that if the art is an extension of the artist, then is the art also an extension of the darker elements of that artist? We may never adequately answer that one.

REASONS TO SEE: The artwork is incredible. Szukalski himself is fascinating although there are parts of his personality that are disturbing to say the least.
REASONS TO AVOID: Szukalski isn’t always an admirable guy.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and depictions of anti-Semitism.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Artist George di Caprio was friends with Szukalski late in his life; his son is the actor Leonardo. Both men are listed as producers on the film.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/24/20: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet, Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Afterimage
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: My Hindu Friend

Loving Vincent

But is it art?

(2017) Animated Feature (Good Deed) Featuring the voices of Douglas Booth, Saoirse Ronan, Helen McCrory, Chris O’Dowd, Robert Gulaczyk, Jerome Flynn, Cezary Lukaszewicz, Eleanor Tomlinson, Aidan Turner, James Green, Bill Thomas, Martin Herdman, Robin Hodges, Josh Burdett, John Sessions, Joe Stuckey, Piotr Pamula, Kamila Dyoubari . Directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman

 

As a painter, Vincent Van Gogh was one of the world’s most influential, creating works that remain iconic to this day – most of us have seen at least pictures of some of his work. As a person, Vincent Van Gogh was an enigma; beset by mental and emotional issues throughout his life (there are some experts who believe he was bipolar) that led to him shooting himself fatally at age 30 in 1890. He remains a mystery to many, producing over 800 paintings in the last 10 years of his life and then abruptly choosing suicide.

Armand Roulin (Booth) is a roustabout, a ne’er do well who is the son of Joseph Roulin (O’Dowd), the postmaster of Arles where Van Gogh lived and a friend to the Dutch painter. Joseph has come into possession of a letter that Vincent (Gulaczyk) wrote to his beloved brother Theo (Pamula) near the end of his life. It is 1891 and Van Gogh has been dead for a year. Joseph has tasked his son with the job of delivering the letter from the late master to his brother in Paris, only when Armand gets there he is unable to locate Theo. He goes to Vincent’s art supply dealer Pere Tanguy (Sessions) who informs him that Theo has followed Vincent into the hereafter. Armand then decides that in lieu of delivering the letter to Theo he will deliver it instead to Theo’s wife Johanna. Tanguy doesn’t know where she is living but suggests contacting Dr. Gachet (Flynn) in Auvers who treated Vincent in the last months of his life and was with him when he died.

Roulin travels to Auvers only to find that the good Doctor is out of town. He decides to stay at the same inn and pub where Vincent stayed; the kindly innkeeper’s daughter Adeline Ravoux (Tomlinson) who remembered the painter quite fondly puts him up in the very room where Vincent lived and died. Armand sets out while he waits for the doctor to return with talking with various townspeople about the painter, from the doctor’s daughter Marguerite (Ronan), his housekeeper (McCrory), a boatman (Flynn) and the local policeman (Herdman). The more Armand interviews the people who knew Van Gogh the more murky his death becomes. Was it really suicide, as the painter himself confessed to on his deathbed? Or was it something else?

First off, this movie is a remarkable achievement in animation. The filmmakers started by filming the actors against green screen, then utilized more than 100 artists to create each frame as an oil painting in the style of Van Gogh (inserting actual paintings of the master in various places more than 40 of them – see if you can spot them all) which came out to about approximately 65,000 paintings all told. In a way, we’re getting a view inside Van Gogh’s head and coming about as close as we will ever get to seeing the world through Van Gogh’s eyes.

The voice acting can be stiff and stuffy at times, but unlike a lot of reviewers I found the story compelling. There is a bit of a mystery to the death of Van Gogh, particularly in light of a 2011 biography that questions the official account of his death and hints that he may have been the victim of an accidental shooting and that he insisted it was suicide to protect the person who shot him. There are certainly some compelling reasons to think it, mainly based on the angle of the shot that mortally wounded the painter. Most suicides put the gun to their head; most don’t kill themselves by shooting themselves in the stomach which is an exceedingly painful way to go. The angle of the wound also suggests a trajectory that would have made it physically unlikely that Van Gogh shot himself although it was possible.

That said, most scholars today agree that this new theory is less likely than suicide and while the filmmakers here seem to lean in the direction of homicide, it at least gives us a bit of a gateway into examining the painter’s works, particularly in the last months of his life. While the movie seems preoccupied with Van Gogh’s death more than his life – something in which Adeline Ravoux actually scolds Armand about during the film – there is no doubt that the filmmakers hold his work in great reverence.

And that’s really the beauty of the film. It brings the world of Van Gogh to life, gives it depth and meaning in ways that most of us could never do on our own. It will hopefully give some folks the impetus to take a closer look at his work and his life; it did me for sure. Spending so much time trying to make sense of his death may give the movie a bit of a morbid tinge but that doesn’t detract at all from the overall beauty that Van Gogh created – and the filmmakers re-created with such obvious love. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up on the shortlist for the Best Animated Feature Oscar for next year.

REASONS TO GO: The technique is startling and brilliant. The use of Van Gogh’s paintings is clever. The story is compelling. The end credits are extremely well done. The film will likely motivate you to explore Van Gogh, his life and his work.
REASONS TO STAY: The film seems more concerned with Van Gogh’s death than with his life. Some of the voice acting is a little stiff.
FAMILY VALUES: The themes here are fairly mature; there’s also some violence, a bit of sexuality and plenty of smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Each one of the film’s more than 65,000 frames were hand-painted using similar techniques to what Van Gogh actually used. It took a team of more than 125 artists more than seven years to complete the massive task.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/11/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 79% positive reviews. Metacritic: 61/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Painting (Le tableau)
FINAL RATING: 8..5/10
NEXT: Clarity

Levitated Mass

L.A. rocks!

(2013) Documentary (Electric City) Michael Heizer, Michael Govan, Jarl Mohn, Terry Semel, Zev Yaroslavsky, Bruce Pollack, Stephen Vander Hart, Mary Heizer, Terry Emmert, Tim Cunningham, Chris Gutierrez, Larry Klayman, Greg Otto, Elaine Wynn, Kathleen Anderson, Wes Molino, Chaz Ermini, Raul Duran, Gregg Lowry, Ron Elad, Laura Roughton, Chrissie Isles. Directed by Doug Pray

Art is an entirely subjective thing. What is art to one person may not necessarily be  to another. Some people can look at a beautiful sunset at call it art; others say that art only exists as a human creation; art cannot be discovered, only created. There is no right answer, incidentally; art is what you think it is.

Michael Heizer is a sculptor who has been pushing the boundaries of art since the ’60s. He created the concept of “negative sculpture” – solid objects with the “art” carved out of them. Heizer also tends to prefer working with massive sizes and shapes. He has mostly been on his Nevada ranch the past couple of decades, working on a unique and perhaps unfinishable sculpture.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t made time for other things however. One concept he has been working on for more than forty years has been the work of art entitled “Levitated Mass” in which a massive boulder is suspended above a trench so people can walk beneath the boulder and alongside it. He would eventually have a supporter in Michael Govan, executive director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or as it is locally known, LACMA.

When Heizer found the perfect rock in a Riverside quarry, he was ready to create his artwork but first he had to get the rock from Riverside to Los Angeles. That’s a 60 mile journey if you make it directly, but a boulder this size – 340 tons, 21 and a half feet tall – isn’t just something you can pick up and put in the back of a pickup truck. A specialized transport had to be constructed just to move it and the route had to go in such a way that the vehicle was able to make it under bridges (and over bridges that were structurally able to support the weight) as well as on roads which didn’t have tight turns that the truck couldn’t make. Eventually a route was plotted that turned the 60 mile trip into 106 miles.

The process to move the boulder was a harrowing one, involving 22 city governments, three county governments and the State of California with the museum having to secure permits from each one of these bureaucracies. Just one refusal would have shut the whole thing down, and there were some legitimate reasons to say no – wear and tear on roads, the involvement of city services, the disruption to traffic (although the rock only traveled late at night).

The museum raised the ten million dollars needed from private donors and eventually, on the night of February 28, 2012 the boulder went underway from the quarry. The museum had to arrange to notify the residents of what was happening, tow cars parked along the route, temporarily move traffic signals and signs, and insure that the rock wasn’t damaged en route. In order to facilitate it, the boulder was wrapped in sheets of Egyptian cotton and essentially hidden from sight.

A curious thing happened on the way to the museum. People turned up to watch the spectacle night after night, sometimes in pajamas in the wee hours of the mornings. Tens of thousands of residents turned up, over a thousand of them gathering at LACMA on March 10 alone to see the boulder arrive at its new home. Spontaneous block parties broke out; people proposed marriage and everywhere the rock went it ignited a debate as to whether the expense was worth it and if this rock was actually art or ego. One thing is for certain; Angelinos love a good spectacle.

Pray wisely doesn’t take sides and allows the viewer to decide these questions for themselves. It’s understandable why some people, particularly in some of the poorest neighborhoods of L.A. would be grousing about spending ten million dollars to move a rock when there were so many urgent needs desperate for funding in those neighborhoods. However, it is also understandable that art has an important place not only in a city’s culture but in its own self-definition. What would New York City be without the Guggenheim, or Chicago without the Cloud Gate sculpture? Sure, they’d still be there but they wouldn’t be the same.

The movie serves as a tribute to human ingenuity as well as human will, the will to make the unlikely happen. One has to admire the tenacity of the team of transportation experts and museum staff as well as Heizer himself. The installation shows skills not only in art but in engineering and architecture as well. It is open to the public at the present and doesn’t require museum admission to see it.

While some of the street interviews tended to raise some of the same points over and over again, it is nonetheless inspiring to watch the transportation, the reaction of the people of Southern California to it and the final installation of the boulder in its new home. Is it art? That’s really your call to make dear reader but as far as I’m concerned, it’s art. Very much so.

REASONS TO GO: Invites debate as to the nature of art. Inspiring and creative.

REASONS TO STAY: Some of the talking heads are a bit superfluous.

FAMILY VALUES:  Suitable for the entire family.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Heizer’s father was a geologist who did a great deal of research into the movement of heavy objects by ancient civilizations.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/10/14: Rotten Tomatoes: no score yet. Metacritic: no score yet.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Tim’s Vermeer

FINAL RATING: 7.5/10

NEXT: Brick Mansions

For No Good Reason

The artist in his workshop.

(2014) Documentary (Sony Classics) Ralph Steadman, Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson, Jann Wenner, Terry Gilliam, William S. Burroughs, Hal Wilner. Directed by Charlie Paul

If you look at the names in the cast of this documentary, you’ll see some of the greatest and most iconoclastic minds of the 20th century. That they are all linked by one famously private British artist gives you an idea of the esteem that he’s held in and the kinds of people who love his art.

Ralph Steadman moved from Great Britain to New York in the 1950s and the following decade met Thompson on a trip to the Kentucky Derby. Steadman would become the illustrator of Thompson’s books and his style and images have become permanently linked with Thompson’s prose. His association with Thompson helped make him essentially Rolling Stone‘s house cartoonist during the glory days of the magazine.

His style which utilizes great big spatters of India ink and other materials is beautiful and grotesque at the same time. We see his technique which is perhaps unique in all of art; when he scatters paint spatters across his canvas, he is almost angry as the liquid hits the surface with an audible SNAP.

Thompson and Steadman maintained a friendship that was often dysfunctional – Steadman hints at the verbal abuse that Thompson would occasionally heap on him – but the genuine affection is evident between both men.

Depp acts as kind of a host and occasional narrator here, appearing onscreen at Steadman’s home and studio in Kent, England to converse, reminisce and utter the word “amazing” again and again while perusing books of Steadman’s artwork while wearing ostentatious hats. I can understand why he’s there – the presence of Depp doubtlessly enticed Sony Classics to distribute the film (which reportedly took 15 years to make) and might be expected to attract fans of the star to see the movie.

Sadly however, the effect of having Depp in the movie is intrusive and takes away focus from the subject of the film. I don’t think that could be helped but frankly, I would have preferred a little less Depp and a lot more Steadman. Steadman doesn’t share a lot of himself to the world; he rarely grants interviews and when he does almost never reveals any personal information. He prefers to let his artwork do the talking for him.

Steadman does make it clear that he sees the role of art as a means to change things for the better, which is admirable. While Thompson did copious amounts of drugs and partied maybe as hard as anyone in history ever has, Steadman did no drugs and focused his attention on social and political causes, many of which were the subjects of his art. His wit is often scathing and generally on the sly side which is on good display here from the opening frames when the Sony Classics logo is displayed in Steadman’s preferred font.

Steadman admires disparate talents like Da Vinci and Picasso, and there is an element of the cave drawings in his art as well, a kind of modern primitivism. The interpretation of art is an individual thing – what I see when I look at Steadman’s work will be somewhat different than what you see. That’s the beauty of art – we see it through our own perceptions and something I miss you’ll latch onto, and vice versa. Everyone interprets art individually.

Along with the Depp thing, I thought the film dragged a bit in places and was tedious in other places. Some judicious trimming would have benefitted the film overall. It is also disappointing that we don’t really get to know Steadman well, although we learn a lot about him. For that alone and for being a fly on the wall as he creates makes the film worth viewing, but I can’t help but think that there should have been a better film made considering the subject matter.

REASONS TO GO: Clever at times, displaying Steadman’s signature wit. Fascinating look at Steadman’s process.

REASONS TO STAY: Overly long and occasionally tedious. Depp’s presence is often distracting.

FAMILY VALUES:  A fairly steady stream of foul language, some drug references and brief sexual images in an artistic setting

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Steadman retains all of his original artwork. The only art he sells are copies or prints of his work which he signs individually.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/25/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 47% positive reviews. Metacritic: 51/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Offshoring 2014 Begins!

Russian Ark (Russkiy kovcheg)

Ghosts in the Hermitage.

(2002) Historical Fantasy (Wellspring) Leonid Mozgovoy, Sergei Dontsov, Mariya Kuznetsova, Mikhail Piotrovsky, David Giorgobiani, Maksim Sergeyev, Natalya Nikulenko, Aleksandr Chaban, Vladimir Baranov, Anna Aleksakhina, Lev Yeliseyev, Oleg Khmelnitsky, Alla Ospienko, Artyom Strelnikov, Tamara Kurenkova, Svetlana Gaytan. Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov

Russian Ark was filmed in the famed Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, which the tsars called home from the time of Peter the Great until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was also produced in one long shot, a la Hitchcock’s Rope and as viewers travel the corridors among the magnificent artworks of the Hermitage, they meet figures from history who lived and worked there.

The story concerns an unseen narrator (Mozgovoy) who is referred to in the credits as “The Spy.” He wakes up after an accident of some sort and finds himself on the grounds of the Hermitage. He enters the palace with a group of revelers, and discovers that the year is 1814. He turns a corner and comes face to face with Peter the Great (Sergeyev). How can that be?

And so it goes, traveling through the passageways, not in one time or another but phasing out, not unlike Billy Pilgrim of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, although writer/director/producer Sokurov integrates this much more smoothly into his storyline than Vonnegut did.

The Spy is joined by a 19th century French nobleman, the Marquis de Custine (Dontsov) who has sharp opinions on Russia and the Russian court, where he was stationed at length during his career. The womanizing Marquis helps the Spy navigate the hallways, past beautiful paintings (some of which are explored at length), through sumptuous balls and court functions, through intrigue and, occasionally, tragedy. This leads to a revelation as to what they are doing there; keep the title in mind at all times.

It’s an ambitious project, with a cast of more than two thousand actors, with only a small portion of them credited, and three orchestras supplying background music.  Part of the movie’s problem is its subject. The Hermitage is a natural venue for a movie, but it is a curse as well; you want to linger among the vast hallways, galleries and salons, examine the artwork. Of course, if the filmmakers were to do that, you’d have a 100-hour long movie.

Likewise, some of the characters that pass through the movie are fascinating, such as Catherine the Great (Kuznetsova), for whom Sokurov obviously held a great deal of affection. In her prime, she is a natural force, a storm that sweeps the Russian landscape and changes it forever. In the twilight of her life, she is a doughty old woman, trudging like a bulldog through the snow of the grounds, unmindful of obstacle or anything else, her steely gaze straight ahead. It’s truly a charming portrayal.

At what point does a concept become a gimmick? The single shot idea could certainly degenerate into gimmickry; even Hitchcock had trouble with it, but it works here. The overall effect is of walking the halls of the Hermitage yourself, making the camera your ultimate point of view. Although the time changes are sometimes dizzying (you move from an elegant modern-day art gallery to a badly damaged room during the siege of Leningrad during World War II in one sequence) and disorienting, it also creates susceptibility in the viewer, for you literally don’t know what’s coming next or whom – or when – you’ll encounter.

Being of Russian heritage myself (my mother’s family hailed from the Ukraine), I found Russian Ark’s commentary on Russian life not always flattering, but always honest and completely scintillating. There is a Russian stoicism permeating the film; life happens and the filmmaker seems to shrug at tragedy and death with a “what can you do” kind of fatalism.

It was not so long before this was made that these guys were an evil empire, but the Russian people have had to overcome a great deal of hardship during those transitional years in shrugging off the communist government they’d pioneered. I don’t think Russian Ark could have been made in quite the same way under the communist regime, but it is hopeful that Russians are embracing their history – warts and all – instead of sweeping the unfavorable bits under the rug.

Russian Ark is a visually stunning, compelling film that takes us through Russian history and art, two areas largely unknown in this country. Even without the spectacle, it’s worth seeing just for the opportunity to learn a little more about that enigmatic country. You should seek this out – it is one of the best movies of the last decade and remains to this day one of the highest grossing Russian-made films in the United States.

WHY RENT THIS: The magnificent artwork and corridors of the Hermitage. Novel concept. Epic sweep of Russian history.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Confusing in places.

FAMILY MATTERS: A few eerie moments.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The entire film was shot in one continuous shot which was choreographed and pre-planned to the very last detail. What you see is the third take – there were two flubbed attempts that thankfully occurred in the first ten minutes. Oh, and the Marquis de Custine was an actual historical figure.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: There is a 48 minute documentary feature on the history of the Hermitage, as well as 43 minute making-of featurette that details all of the issues and preplanning of this massive undertaken, which included three different orchestras, almost 2000 actors and 33 different rooms of the museum all filmed in one continuous shot.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $6.7M on an unknown production budget; despite the epic scope of the film, I believe that it was profitable in the end.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: This is like nothing else that’s come before or since.

FINAL RATING: 10/10

NEXT: My Country, My Country