BEFORE: This film was always part of the plan for this year - originally I had it in July, with the other Jake Gyllenhaal films, "Spider-Man: Far From Home", "Rocket Boys" and "Enemy". But before I could watch it then, I worked out my path to the end of the year, and I realized that it ALSO fit in a place in early November, coming out of the month of scary films. The latest re-shuffle (the one that removed a couple of animated kids films and a film about golf from the horror chain) put it smack in the middle of October, to make a necessary connection. This separates it from the three other films with John Malkovich, but that turns out to be a very GOOD thing, I think, because the IMDB is telling me that this IS a horror film, so rightfully, it belongs exactly here. See, I told you these things have a funny way of working out, if I just keep making my chain stronger as I go.
Tom Sturridge carries over from "Mary Shelley", which turned out to be extremely helpful - this actor has not made a lot of films, like under 20, so I just HAVE to take those links when they come along.
THE PLOT: A satire set in the contemporary art world scene of Los Angeles, where big money artists and mega-collectors pay a high price when art collides with commerce.
AFTER: This film took a bit of time to really reveal itself as a horror film, but if you can stick with it, that genre is totally represented here - but I think it's tough to discern whether this is a satire of the horror genre, or a film that's a satire of the art world and chooses the tropes of horror films to tell its story, or perhaps something else entirely. I think that's because there's such a big build-up to get to the horror parts - like usually with a slasher film there will be a killing very early on, so we all will know what we're getting into, what kind of story we're about to get. So in essence here you've got to sit through half of a film about the comings and goings in the art scene, the dealers and the art critics and the promoters and the museum representatives, all circling around the galleries trying to discover the next bit thing, while staying current on what (and whom) the previous next big thing is currently doing.
Naturally, it's a cutthroat world, and one with constantly shifting sands as THIS artist leaves THAT agent for THIS one so his work can be displayed in THAT gallery or have a show in THAT museum. Meanwhile everyone's trying to look fashionable as they make the scene, or constantly re-inventing their own images so they can stay on top of the latest trends and ahead of some imaginary curve. And that all seems fairly exhausting - a gallery worker named Josephina has a difficult boss and is struggling to keep her job, when an old man with no family dies in her building, and she discovers that he's been making art in his apartment for years, and had requested that it all be destroyed upon his death. But it's "outsider" art, which means it's all very disturbing, super-trendy, and best of all, free and available.
The name of the deceased artist is Vertil Dease, which seems like an odd one - I do so many puzzles, like cryptic crosswords and such when I'm on the subway, that immediately this seemed like it must be an anagram of something. I've never heard the first name "Vertil" before, and remember back in the movie "Angel Heart" when De Niro played a character named "Louis Cyphre"? OK, that wasn't an anagram, that was more of a sound-alike, but still, in the middle of "Velvet Buzzsaw" I stopped to see if I could anagram the artist's name and get a clue about what might happen. Right off, I could see the letters of "evil" in the first name, and that led me to considering "devil", so the best I could do was "Devil see art" or maybe "Evil art seed". Looking now at the Trivia section on IMDB, it seems that the director borrowed the name of a real man that lived in the 1800's, though he probably wasn't an artist. OK, so not an anagram, but I felt like I was really close to something.
The artist had a strange back-story, with an abusive childhood, spent time in asylum, possibly killed his father, though this is sort of left open and questionable, what everyone who views the art feels is that he really put his heart and soul into his work - perhaps even a bit too literally. Certainly there are some artists out there who have tried to capture the essence of evil in their work - or perhaps as with Van Gogh, some small portion of their mental illness manifests itself in the art in some way. Think about Edvard Munch, or Hieronymus Bosch, painters who have tried to depict psychological torture or the biblical Hell in art - Google "depiction of hell in art" and you may get some idea where this film is going, just mix that with the creepy feeling that the eyes in a painting are somehow following you across the room... This painter's work belongs in MOMA - by which I mean the Museum of Morbid Art.
One interpretation (and I admit, there may be several) is that the artist is somehow reaching out from beyond the grave to punish the people who are selling and buying his paintings. Sure, why not? What's one more weird premise, after you've seen a world where zombies live side-by-side with proper English society, or puppets live side-by-side with humans? (Also, animals are being injected with mutating growth hormones, and aliens are here to either hunt us, or take over our bodies and live among us...) But then again, maybe something else is happening here - note that there's one assistant who keeps moving from one gallery job to another, and people keep hiring her, in order to get the dirt on their competition. Sure, she LOOKS innocent, but she's the one who keeps discovering the bodies, that's pretty suspicious. I'm just sayin'.
(I have to call a NITPICK POINT on the part of the story where the male lead character hires this assistant, gives her the key to his storage locker to put some of the "evil" artwork there, and then in the next scene, he's going to the storage locker himself. OK, so why did he give HER the key, if he was already on his way there? Obviously the plot demands that he go there, then she has to arrive there later, but this key exchange thing was clunky and made zero sense.)
Nah, who am I kidding, let's go with option #1, because it leads to people in the art world being injured or killed in a variety of ways, and I guarantee there are a few that you haven't seen before in a movie. But hey, I don't know what kind of movies YOU watch, so maybe I'm wrong. All I know it's been a long time since I've seen anyone killed BY ART in a movie, and that happens here, again and again. There's a point where that concept is just borderline ridiculous, and then of course it goes over that border and becomes very ridiculous indeed - but perhaps none of this is meant to be taken seriously. However, the problem with that becomes, if the film can't take itself seriously, how the hell am I supposed to do that?
What I found confusing was that the film started in Miami, and then suddenly shifted to Los Angeles, with all the same characters. Suddenly every character in the cast is bi-coastal? OK, I get that both cities probably have thriving art scenes, but it seems likely that some people would be part of the scene in Miami, and others would be L.A.-based. This sudden shift is treated like it's not even a thing, we're just in one city and then the next, with the same players. It's a bit odd, and there was no reason why the story couldn't just take place in one city's art scene. (If you've seen this film, you're probably thinking right now, "THAT'S what he had a problem with?")
I'm getting closer to my vacation, I can't believe that in just four days, I'm going to be in Las Vegas - I think I can fit in three more films before I go, but probably not four, because I have to save Friday night for packing and pre-trip anxiety. When I get back, I should have just enough time for 5 more films before Halloween, which thankfully is at the end of the month - my thanks to whoever put that holiday on the last day of October, because that gives me time to finish this horror chain, right on schedule. Watching "Velvet Buzzsaw" cleared one film from my Netflix list, and while I'm in Vegas maybe I can make a dent on clearing all the comedy specials I've got in my queue.
Also starring Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "The Sisters Brothers"), Rene Russo (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Toni Collette (last seen in "In Her Shoes"), Zawe Ashton (last seen in "Nocturnal Animals"), Natalia Dyer, Daveed Diggs, Billy Magnussen (last seen in "The Meddler"), John Malkovich (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Alan Mandell, Mig Macario (last seen in "The Final Cut"), Nitya Vidyasagar (last seen in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps"), Sedale Threatt Jr. (last seen in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Pat Healy (last seen in "The Post"), Marco Rodriguez (last seen in "House of Sand and Fog"), Keith Bogart, Sofia Toufa.
RATING: 6 out of 10 recordings of whale songs
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