Art School Confidential Review [2]
Posted by Chris McCarver on 05.16.2006
Keep this one confidential. PLEASE.
Art School Confidential
Starring Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, Matt Kesslar, John Malkovitch, Jim Broadbent, and Anjelica Huston
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
Distributed by United Artists and Sony Pictures Classics
Rated R for language including sexual references, nudity and a scene of violence
Release Date (nationwide): May 12, 2006
Runtime: 1 hr., 42 mins.
Review by CHRIS McCARVER
I wish I could get happy about experimental cinema. In this age where mainstream cinema chugs out one derivative action flick or human-interest piece after another, independent film would appear to be the last bastion of creativity and innovation in this landscape. If I'm sounding like an embittered old film snob, well it's likely because I just got out of a screening of Art School Confidential, the second collaboration between Bad Santa director Terry Zwigoff and indy comics creator Daniel Clowes, who brought Clowes' graphic novel Ghost World to the big screen in 2001. And friends, this movie was not a fun two hours.
The protagonist of the piece is wannabe "great artist" Jerome Platz (Max Minghella, Syriana), a suburban target for high-school bullies who decides to parlay his notebook-margin scribbles into a career by attending famed art college Strathmore Institute. His choice of Strathmore as his prospective alma mater is for more than simply trying to escape his personal sector of suburban hell; a picture of a gorgeous blonde nude model is emblazoned upon the school's promotional materials, giving him hope that his days as a celibate misanthrope may finally come to an end.
Poor Jerome soon learns that his dreams of super-stardom as the 21st century's answer to Picasso are not as attainable and rife with obstacles. On top of the fact that all of the students in his drawing class (in which most of the film takes place) hate his guts, the one person he gets along with (Joel Moore) is a jaded three-time dropout only majoring in art for the girls, and his teacher (John Malkovitch) offers minimal direction. The one bright spot in Jerome's academic career is his befriending of the brochure model, Audrey (Tristan + Isolde's Sophia Myles), but the relationship, and his artistic standing, becomes threatened by a mysterious pretty-boy newcomer to his class (Matt Keeslar, "Masters of Horror").
Acting as something of a secondary subplot to Jerome's trials as an artist is a bit of a murder mystery involving a string of serial stranglings, which one of Jerome's two roommates, film major Vince (Ethan Suplee of "My Name is Earl" fame), is attempting to make a film of. Jerome finds himself embroiled in this murder case, largely due to his association to an embittered boozy artist (Jim Broadbent of the Bridget Jones films).
What was probably kept the most "confidential" was what this film was trying to be, because my biggest complaint about this film was its seeming oblivousness of its own theme. What starts out as something of a comedy metamorphizes into some dark character study, then, goes into some very strange territory with one of the single most nonsensical climaxes ever seen on film. In short, this movie was on a steady course down the freeway, took the off-ramp onto the rough side roads, and ultimately wrapped the car around the tree.
Also impossible to keep straight was whether or not to like Max Minghella's character of the embattled Jerome. The film literally opens to Jerome, as a child, getting the crap kicked out of him by bullies, so immediately he becomes a character to sympathize with. Halfway through, however, Jerome then becomes a petty competitor for his own standing as an artist, willing to go to whatever means necessary, even those morally ambiguous, to make himself look good in the eyes of his peers. And, when those efforts inevitably backfire, whether or not to feel bad about him, to actually empathize with yet another staggering social defeat, often comes out fifty-fifty.
As far as the supporting cast goes, each secondary character fell into two categories, either as a completely unlikeable one-dimensional self-parody or a character with such a minimal amount of screentime their mere inclusion in the film is puzzling. The subplot involving Vince's film about the "Strathmore Strangler" was the worst sort of B-plot, but at the same time, it was almost more watchable than the main plot (never a good sign). The faculty (including Malkovitch's character and one played by a woefully underused Anjelica Huston) are a bunch of failed artists for which teaching has become the final torment for death. And each of Jerome's classmates stand around vapidly until it's time to inflict more disdain on Jerome as if responding to a bell-ring in some experiment in Pavlovian psychology.
The 411: A sophomore effort from the pairing that succeeded so well with Ghost World is conceivably, one would hope, a slam-dunk hit. Nothing could be further from the truth in this fractured fratboy farce turned dark carnival of the soul. Art School Confidential could have been a welcome change for those who only think comics of the superhero genre are getting any kind of notice from Hollywood, if it was a good film. And a good film this was not.
