Velvet Buzzsaw

Dir: Dan Gilroy

2019

****

While 2016’s Nocturnal Animals was a horror of sorts set in the art world, I’m not sure a pure fantasy horror has actually ever had an art theme to it. Velvet Buzzsaw is a strange mix of Robert Altman and Final Destination that explores the soul of creativity. Dan Gilroy conceived the project after Superman Lives, a film which he had a hand in developing, was abruptly cancelled by Warner Bros. just weeks before filming was set to start. It’s a moment that changed the direction of Gilroy’s career and how he approached film making. "I remember being just devastated," Gilroy said. "I'd worked for a year and a half. This was going to be a massive film for me. I was so excited. So I drove down to Santa Monica, and I sat on the beach, and I was just trying to process this year and a half, and I thought, 'Wow, I could have written all of those words on the beach in the sand, and the waves could have just washed them away.' That's pretty much the relevance of what I just went through." However, Gilroy began to realize that the time wasn't wasted as he grew as a writer from it and led him to start working on projects that mattered to him, not just what he was hired for. It's that decision that ultimately led him to Velvet Buzzsaw and the final scene of the film specifically. When asked what he wanted audiences to take away from the film, Gilroy said "I hope people look at art in a slightly different way. Any time you listen to a piece of music or look at a sculpture or a painting or a film, you realize the artists behind that have invested what I believe to be their creative soul into the work. To me, that's a bit of a sacred thing and I think we've lost that a little bit. I would love it if we could return to that." Gilroy was struck by the idea for Velvet Buzzsaw after having visited the Dia contemporary-art gallery in Beacon, New York and hours after came up with a rough plot. " I was wandering around this huge, empty warehouse with all this rather disturbing contemporary art. And I wound up in the basement in a video installation with, like, dentist chairs and rats running around. And I just thought, 'Man, this would be a great place for a horror movie.' The idea that artists invest their souls in their work and it's more than a commodity - that has always interested me. I suddenly saw a way of incorporating it all, to explore how, when art and commerce are dangerously out of balance, bad things can happen. It clicked very quickly." It is quite effective too and he clearly did his research. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a cliched art critic Morf Vandewalt and we follow him to an art exhibition alongside his friend and agent Josephina (Zawe Ashton) who works for tough art gallery owner Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo) - formerly a member of the rock band Velvet Buzzsaw. Morf is unfulfilled in his own love life with his boyfriend Ed, and so starts a sexual relationship with Josephina. Returning back to Los Angeles, Josephina finds a dead man called Vetril Dease in her apartment block and, discovering that he was an artist, enters his home to discover a myriad of paintings. Josephina steals the paintings to show to Morf and Rhodora who become fascinated with Dease and see an opportunity to sell the pieces to the public. Josephina begins exhibiting the artwork at the request of Rhodora. Morf's art curator friend Gretchen (Toni Collette) and a former abstract artist for the Haze Gallery, Piers (John Malkovich), become equally enamored with Dease's work. The pieces are shown in a successful public display in which industry professionals intend to purchase them. Under orders from Rhodora to ensure the rarity of the paintings, gallery worker Bryson (Billy Magnussen) transports half of the paintings to storage. While transporting them, out of curiosity, he opens a crate and decides to keep one of the artworks for himself. En route, he accidentally crashes his car when lit cigarette ash disposed on a painting causes severe burns. Retreating to a gas station, Bryson is attacked by a painting of monkeys fixing a car and goes missing, as well as the artworks. Morf begins researching Dease, discovering that he suffered from a troubled and abusive childhood that resulted in the murder of his father and his growing mental illness that he portrayed in the paintings. Jon Dondon (Tom Sturridge), an opposing art gallery owner, attempts to tell Dease's story to the press but is soon murdered when he becomes trapped in an artwork and hanged by his scarf. Rhodora's former assistant Coco (Natalia Dyer), who was also searching for a personal file on Dease kept by her boss, discovers Jon's body the next morning. After Jon's funeral, Morf notices a hand in a Dease painting suddenly move, causing him to be overwhelmed. One by one each character begins to believe that the works are cursed and that Dease himself succumbed to his own demise when he tried to burn his own paintings. Analysis of the paintings reveals that many of them contain traces of skin and human tissue within them and the atmosphere of the film gets very eerie indeed. There is quite a lot of symbolism within the film, some of which could be overlooked by people unfamiliar with certain art movements but it is clear that Gilroy is making a statement about people profiting from other people’s work. Indeed, the only people to survive are the artists inspired by the pieces, rather than obsessed by their value. It is a critique on critique in many respects, that is, a sort of revenge by an artist. It’s not sour grapes either but Gilroy is exercising a few demons, which is always an interesting thing for the audience to see. I like how Gilroy has worn his heart on his sleeve and I like how he’s gone about it. There are many tributes within the film too which are clear and a nice touch, making the film even more personal. Some of the deaths are better than others, with some of them poor and other amazing, but all are symbolic in some way. The characters are all a bit cliché and all of them are floored. Our critic is hypercritical, the agent is talentless, the gallery owner is a sell-out and everyone wants credit of other people’s success. It is a culling of creative vampires and the age old tale of obsession leading to demise. It’s different and it’s odd. I really liked it and I’d like to see more horror films set in the art world now.