Van Gogh is alluded to on a couple occasions in the movie Basquiat by Julian Schnabel -twenty-two years before Schnabel would put his stamp on the story of the most famous tortured artist with At Eternity’s Gate. From the start of his career as a filmmaker, he seemed to be building towards it -his predilection towards the lives of unconventional artists in turmoil beginning here in 1996. He himself of course was and is a successful painter -he had a lens into that subject that other filmmakers might lack. And Basquiat is set within a world he occupied -the art scene of late 80s New York, coloured by a postmodernist explosion, by Andy Warhol and his acolytes. But Jean-Michel Basquiat was more than that as Schnabel endeavours to show, and does a fine job emphasizing his distinctness even against a litany of tortured poets.
Basquiat is played by Jeffrey Wright in his first leading role on film -a sensitive portrait of an eccentric man, a drug-addled high school dropout living out of a box in Tompkins Square Park, whose graffiti art all around Manhattan -enigmatic, visceral, and teeming with abstract racial and social commentary- begins catching the eyes of prominent figures in art dealing, including Andy Warhol, here played appropriately by David Bowie, who takes Basquiat under his wing as the young man struggles with the attention towards his art and interpretations about both it and himself.
There’s a great scene where an interviewer played by Christopher Walken attempts to apply a host of readings to Basquiat’s work as subversive of the black experience and black stereotypes in New York -in an incredibly awkward way- and questions if he worries his work will be exploited or misappropriated, and Basquiat is confused. He doesn’t see his art in those kind of terms, much as he has things to say about racism and society -yet it tends to be purely subjective for him. And he spends a chunk of the movie alienated and baffled by people’s reception to him -unclear why some may want to purchase a piece by him that by his view is not finished. There is a disconnect stressed between artists and observers to the art world, some of whom may (like Willem Dafoe’s electrician -originating his meme six years earlier than we thought) consider themselves artists too.
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Of course, Basquiat’s own assessment of himself as an artist is complex -depicted as one of those whose work is just a necessary outpouring of expression. He almost seems to exist in relief to the world, Warhol being a rare figure he can connect to on that level. There is a degree to which this personality might feel abrasively tropey -at one point on impulse he paints over the panties of his girlfriend Gina (Claire Forlani) and is shocked by her fury. In the hands of a lesser actor it could feel grossly manufactured, but Wright communicates a very authentic soul to his erratic, self-destructive genius. A man whose process is inscrutable, who looks as out of place with the Warhol cult as he does with everyday society.
Bowie makes for a good Warhol -one of the only actors to play him who knew the man personally- if a few of his expressions read as just a bit forced. Schnabel somehow managed to assemble a really strong cast of bigger names and up-and-comers who, like the ensemble of Oppenheimer, accentuate Wright’s performance tenfold. A lot of them are composites, and indeed parts of the film are fictionalized, Schnabel not having officially the rights to Basquiat’s work. Benicio del Toro plays Basquiat’s friend Benny, where some of the film’s deeper conversations happen. Courtney Love plays a woman he has an affair with, Parker Posey plays an interested art promoter, even Sam Rockwell shows up as a street thug. Michael Wincott channels the artist who ‘discovers’ Basquiat while Dennis Hopper is the dealer instrumental in Basquiat and Warhol’s friendship. Most curiously, Schnabel has Gary Oldman play a self-insert character, another young flamboyant artist on the edges of Warhol’s collective, who encourages and admires Basquiat.
The attachment Basquiat forms to Warhol as a mentor, even as he appears in the film sparingly, is highly emphasized, and in particular the devastating effect Warhol’s death in 1987 had on him. It is framed close enough to the end and Basquiat’s own death from a heroin overdose a year and a half later that the two feel connected, and it’s one area of the film where the cult of Warhol overrides the narrative of Basquiat, turning his story into one revolving around another.
Nonetheless, Schnabel demonstrates his artistic capacity is not simply suited for one medium. His cinematography rendered in black and white is nicely deliberate; Basquiat when in the proper art world is framed in contrasting relation to big white empty spaces, even in Warhol’s Factory. Yet he is shown as visually more at ease in a basketball court with Benny -even how he styles his hair is particular. There are a few beautiful evocations as when we see an obscure visual art piece set to gorgeous poetry by Basquiat -ostensibly made in honour of Gina- and in bookending reflections that appear to depict a corner of his childhood, yet in a metaphorical sense. Especially it is effective in the ending notes, set to strong music. The score for this film naturally was composed by John Cale of the Velvet Underground, one of several figures actually associated with Warhol, Basquiat, or that world whom Schnabel put in the movie. It leaves you with a sense of profundity around Basquiat, yes, but a glowing humanity as well -that Wright brings to life so earnestly in time for us to really mourn his death. Ultimately Schnabel painted another worthy portrait.
The Criterion Channel Presents: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (2024)
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Though the film essay arguably began with works like Man With a Movie Camera and F For Fake, it has become a modestly more pertinent genre in the internet age that Criterion really ought to take seriously. Enter, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, one of last year’s great under-seen documentaries that not only presents its narrative, focused on the contexts leading up to a 1961 incident at the UN Security Council where jazz musician activists Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach started a mass protest over the killing of Congolese prime minister and African nationalist Patrice Lumumba; but threads a thesis throughout on the history and continued legacy of colonialism, the African diaspora, and geopolitical issues as relevant today as in the 1960s. Presented almost entirely through carefully edited footage that creates an epic tapestry of the issue hand, director Johan Grimonprez makes his point with astounding sharpness -while the footage itself is crisp and clear. And all throughout the film is coloured by enticing and often thematically appropriate jazz music, further casting the history and geography in relation to culture. The kind of intellectual and transformative piece that fits the Criterion mould well, and marks a good step forward in the advancement of the film essay form.
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