Modigliani (2004)

Wow, somebody besides Modigliani was smoking hashish when making this thing. It's incoherent, it takes fictional liberties that border on infantile (never mind trying to create an interesting story),and the acting and writing (basics, yes?) are strained and patched together. Stephen Holden is right, this is a movie about how not to make a movie about a famous artist.

Andy Garcia? I can see how people find him handsome, and Modigliani was a lady's man, for sure, so that much works. But he isn't an actor with either subtlety or fire, mostly just self-consciousness. His girlfriend, Jeanne, who was supposed to be 19 when the artist met her, is played with surprising unevenness by the usually talented Elsa Zylberstein, who was almost twice that age, 36. (She does have a naturally long face, which fits the elongated look of the artist's many portraits.) And then there is an even worse fit, the man playing the short fiery Spaniard named Picasso, an Iranian-British comedian name Omid Djalili. He neither looks nor acts like Picasso, who was filmed and photographed so much we know quite exactly what he was like.

So what is it about this film that makes sense? Nothing. There is snow in one direction and not in the the other. There is the foolish brandishing of guns, glasses smashed to the floor, hallucinations that play cheap cinematic games, an invented rivalry between Picasso and Modigliani as if they were the only two artists of note in town (this is Paris, 1917, remember). Oh, and speaking of that, where's the war? You know, World War I. Ha.

So, Modigliani impregnates this young Catholic student, Jeanne, and shows raging compassion and neglect in almost the same scene. He loves poverty and seems to never really paint--except when he gives up halfway through and destroys the thing in a fit. (This is only partly true--he drew and painted like mad, but not destructively.) The light is often nice, his T.B. is neatly invisible until the dramatic final bow, and Paris never looked so tawdry and small. It's a shame, because it could at least have been brimming with atmosphere. Or, taking it another direction, the movie could have leapt into complete fantasy like Derek Jarman's "Caravaggio" or the inventive (and more accurate) "Goya in Bordeaux."

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Anyone, not with all the better artist films out there. As a final note, even if you like everything I didn't, you'll have to keep track of the many side characters (artists who come and go like Max Jacobs, Diego Rivera, and Utrillo),and the put up with a pastiched together simultaneous scene of several of these painters all making their works for the competition, feverishly painting as club music plays in the soundtrack as if it were a high school football tournament.

Good luck. The death mask at the end? That's for real. And the final tragic suicide, as well. The truth of Modigliani is far more intense than this frivolous thing.

Andy Garcia gives an award winning performance as Italian Jewish artist, Amedeo Modigliani, in this film about his tragic life. He was madly in love with a French Catholic woman, Jeanne, whose father made it impossible for them to be together. Regardless, Jeanne would sacrifice custody of their own daughter in order to be with him. She just couldn't live without him. The supporting cast is quite good with Miriam Margolyes OBE playing Gertrude Stein (where was Alice B. Toklas?) in this film. The film was filmed on location in Paris. Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and other famed artists of that period were also portrayed but my main problem with this film was the lack of clarity in this film. It's a worthy effort but it could have done a little better.

MODIGLIANI is a difficult movie to review. It has some very strong features such as the cinematography that captures the artsy feeling of Paris 1919 and, despite excesses, manages to create some visuals of hallucinations and the wild madness of painters painting canvasses; a rather complex peak into the lives of several of the more revolutionary artists of the time; and a substantial feeling for the interchange between artist and model. The main problem with the film is a script that is banal, limited in historical validity, and concentrating on a single rather silly motif of a painters' competition.

Amedeo Modigliani (1884 - 1920) was a Sephardic Jew from Italy who moved to the mecca of Paris to create his brilliant portraits and sculptures of nudes and extended neck women and girls. His genius lay in his unifying the spiritual Eastern iconography (tribal art and Judaism) of his heritage with the Christian (read Catholic) traditions of the artists with whom he associated which resulted in his creations of the female nude from a feminist cultural perspective. What this film delivers is a rather annoying portrait of a young consumptive artist who drank and drugged himself to death at a moment in his career when renown was just beginning. The reasons for his place in art history are merely hinted all for the sake of the Hollywood biopic.

Andy Garcia plays Modigliani with a modicum of élan and a plethora of bad traits. The lovely model Jeanne Hébuterne (Elsa Zylberstein) who was the subject not only of his portraits but the mother of his illegitimate child and his live-in paramour is a bit long in the tooth on suffering, though despite the fact that Zylberstien is hampered by both a weak script and limited acting, she does have an uncanny resemblance to Jeanne. The artists with whom 'Modi' works include a strangely miscast Picasso (Omid Djalili),Chaim Soutine (Stevan Rimkus),Maurice Utrillo (Hippolyte Girardot),Diego Rivera (Dan Astileanu),Zborowski (Louis Hilyer),and the strangely non-effeminate Jean Cocteau (Peter Capaldi)! Dealer Max Jacob (Udo Kier) and Gertrude Stein (Miriam Margolyes!) are thrown in with the harlequins and 'Modi's' child spirit Dedo (Frederico Ambrosino) for atmosphere. The storyline is one that could have easily been told in the requisite time frame but MODIGLIANI taxes the viewers' attention for over two hours.

So aside from a visually exciting experience there is really very little to be learned from this liquor and opium soaked consumptive noisy melodrama that could have been about any one of the artists involved in the story. The genius of Modigliani is barely tapped. Grady Harp