There were many things about Velvet Buzzsaw that caught my attention.
One, it had a really cool name. Two, it takes place largely in the art world, which
hits close to home since I come from a family of artists. But the thing that
sealed the deal for me were the cast and director. Dan Gilroy wrote and
directed Nightcrawler, one of my
favorite movies of the past ten years, where he wrung an all-time best performance
from Jake Gylenhaal as a sociopathic go-getter who makes it big as a camera wielding,
ambulance chasing stringer for a morning news station. Seeing them work
together again with such a fascinating premise seems like such a blessing.
Surely, they can make something magical out of this, right? …Right?
Our story revolves three elite
members of the art world: Morf Vandewalt (Jake Gylenhaal), an influential art
critic, Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo), a recovering punk turned gallery owner, and
Josephina (Zawe Ashton), Rhodora’s assistant and Morf’s newest lover. They’re
all looking for their big break, which comes in the form of an unexpected
discovery: a treasure trove of eerily haunted paintings founded in Josephina’s
recently deceased neighbor’s apartment. The gallery immediately snatches them
up and the artist, Vitril Dease, becomes an overnight sensation. His pieces are
raking eight-figure prices, and Morf begins research on a book about the
enigmatic painter. But just as things are starting to turn around, people
within their orbit start dying gruesomely, suggesting that whatever took the
artist’s life may be coming for them next.
One of the things I loved
about Nightcrawler was how it twisted
a simple story with one small change. The outline of the plot is a typical
inspirational story of someone who achieves his dreams through sheer charm,
determination, and a win-at-all-costs attitude, but by making the protagonists’
goal to become someone who hunts down disasters, accidents and crime scenes so
he can film the aftermath, Dan Gilroy shows us what kind of person it would
actually take to achieve something that way. Velvet Buzzsaw approaches its subject from a similar angle, highlighting
the competitive, pretentious and predatory nature of the modern art (and perhaps
the film industry by comparison), and how commercialization can lead to
degradation either of the artist or the artists themselves. Nowhere is this
more evident than in the movie’s opening scene. Not only are we introduced to
our three protagonists, who all reap the benefits of art despite not being
artists themselves, but we also meet some potential future victims, including a
shrewd museum curator (Toni Collette), a young rising talent (Daveed Diggs),
and an old veteran (John Malkovich) whose critical acclaim went down after he
quit drinking.
I’m always weary of any movie
or show that features a character who’s a critic, not because I feel personally
attacked, but because how that critic is portrayed more often than not says a
lot about the author. (It’s practically the only reason I wasn’t crazy for Birdman.) In this case, Jake Gylenhaal’s
portrayal is a caricature: a pretentious killjoy who relishes his power in
making or breaking careers and can’t turn off his critiques even when he’s at a
colleague’s funeral. But he’s one of the more generous interpretations. Nearly
every character in this movie is shallow and two-dimensional to the point of
parody, and they spend so much time being nasty and devious to each other that
after a while you begin actively rooting for them to be killed. This is all
done by design, of course, as Gilroy is very specific about who does and doesn’t
get axed, what it’s lacking is an incentive to care. You can have a cast of
unlikeable characters. Hell, Nightcrawler
was chock full of detestable characters and he killed the only decent one.
Although this feels like it like
it was aiming for the more lurid works of Brian De Palma or Dario Argento but
with a more modern sheen, the thing that it reminded me the most of was the Final Destination movies, in that it’s
all really just an elaborate setup to kill off some detestable characters in
some creative ways. Dease’s backstory reads more like the origin of a serial
killer, and it’s hinted that he mixed his paint with blood. Whether it’s his vengeful
spirit or some other demonic entity enacting these executions is never
explained and doesn’t really matter, but its so potent that it infects all works
of art around it. Velvet Buzzsaw is a
lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them. If a movie is willing to have two
scenes where someone mistakes a piece of trash for an art piece just to make a
point, don’t expect its symbolism to be any more charitable.
Bottom line, Velvet Buzzsaw fancies itself on the
cutting edge, but is about as sharp as its title. Judged on its own merits,
there are some admirable qualities. The script’s dialogue drips with venom,
Robert Elswit’s vivid cinematography is something to behold, some of the kills
are pretty creative and intense, and even though I hate most of these characters, the cast
does a fine job of making them so hateable if that was their goal. It works
fine as a dumb slasher movie, but don’t expect anything deeper than that.
6/10
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