Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) - Movie Review

After two very solid and quite grounded character pieces, the latest from writer/director Dan Gilroy is a beast of a different palette. Oh, it shows him still in his highly cynical wheelhouse, once again taking inspiration from the Los Angeles cultural landscape to show another story of people who are mainly in it for themselves, but his methodology this time around shows him in new territory.

Part psychologically-tinged horror flick, part ensemble satire of the world of high art, Gilroy finds himself surrounded by highly capable actors, all of whom have their own differing connections to the art world, from Daveed Diggs’ and his homegrown street-born works in music and theatre, to John Malkovich spearheading a short film that won’t see public release until 2115. Employing an almost-hypertextual framing, the narrative drifts to and from the characters’ point-of-view, ranging from artists to art critics to art buyers to art sellers, all of whom find themselves in the midst of a murder mystery where the art itself may be the culprit.

As far as satirising the high-brow world of elitist art, this hits most of the expected/necessary talking points: The artistic process as a means of confronting personal demons within the artist, the economical logistics that bring that art to a prospective audience, how lower-class reality is commoditised and fetishised to appease the wealthy, even the implications of directly profiting off of the work of someone in the throes of mental anguish. It’s accurate stuff, aided by some remarkably subtle nods to the rhetoric of pop art figurehead Andy Warhol, scrutinising the rather cutthroat business behind artistic expression.

Of course, highfalutin art world shenanigans still need a vehicle to become palatable for the kind of audience that doesn’t have immediate access to this kind of landscape, and this is where the film’s merit as pure horror shines through. Looking like Stephen King by way of Francis Bacon painting a film poster for Trash Humpers, the imagery and eventual deaths bring out a certain vitality in the genre cinema artistry on display, while building on the consistent fixation with where the boundaries between art and real life rub up against each other. It’s the kind of horror that easily appeals to me almost too easily, and that’s not just because Jake Gyllenhaal’s art critic ends up becoming the closest this film has to a heroic main character.

That last part felt a tad strange at first, considering the real-world grievances regarding art criticism that pops up far too often in discussions of cinema. Always cool to see one form of elitism get rejected for another one cut from the same cloth(!) Especially weird considering Dan Gilroy’s last film, Roman J. Israel, Esq., was met with collective shrugs on release. He wouldn’t exactly be the first filmmaker to take criticisms seriously and turn their own art into a tirade against such negativity; Roland Emmerich did the same thing by inserting Siskel & Ebert parodies in his woeful version of Godzilla, and Paul Feig wound up making real-world scepticism about his take on Ghostbusters into part of the narrative itself.

However, this film’s main intent came not from the opinions of everyone else, and more to do with Gilroy’s reflections on his own work. Specifically, his work on the film Superman Lives!, the subject of one of the best films of 2015 with The Death Of “Superman Lives!”: What Happened?. He was one of three main writers that were brought into the project, and while he put in a good year and a half of his own ideas into it, the film never saw completion. It must’ve been a hard endeavour, to put so much of one’s own creativity into a work that never managed to see fruition. In the words of art gallery worker Josephina, played by Zawe Ashton: “What’s the point of art if no one sees it?”

But that line of thinking only applies to the observer, the audience, the one that witnesses the art. For the artist themselves, as shown nicely by the presence of Malkovich as the rather no-bullshit Piers, the act of creation and release is its own reward. Artists tend to make art more for themselves than anyone else, and the whole idea of undiscovered masterpieces from dead artists being put on display for the 1% is… quite perverse, frankly. It plays into a worryingly morbid subset of the artistic discourse, one where tragedy and sorrow and death aren’t chances for empathy but chances for marketing. Anyone who watched The Dark Knight in cinemas knows full well the power of posthumous advertising.

Honestly, it’s that last part that really sinks in with me. Aside from being a very good horror flick in its own right, and a suitably scathing depiction of the business of art, all of the observations, musings and statements regarding the nature of art not only resonate but, like the best art, comes from an honest place. It’s as intellectually stimulating as any of Dan Gilroy’s other efforts to date, and with him taking steps into new genre territories in his mission to expose cynical humanity, I’ll admit that I’m more hyped than ever to see what he has in store for us next.