Velvet Buzzsaw (Dan Gilroy, 2019) USA

Reviewed by Kaio Farkouh.

In 2014, the director, Dan Gilroy launched his first movie “Nightcrawler”, and he landed his first Oscar nomination at that year. Nominated for best original screenplay. In the meanwhile he wrote some movies and he directed and wrote the screenplay for a movie starring Denzel Washington in 2017, called “Roman J. Israel, Esq”, which on this case, Denzel Washington was nominated for best actor. This year, the director is back, writing  and directing, the movie “Velvet Buzzsaw”, which reunites two actors, who worked with him at the time, when he directed “Nightcrawler”, Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo.

The film starts with art Critic Morf Vanderwalt (Jake Gyllenhaal), as he goes to an art exhibition. There we are introduced to the rich cast of the movie Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo), Josephina (Zawe Ashton), Gretchen (Toni Collete), Damrish (David Diggs) and Piers (John Malkovich). Josephina finds some random arts made by a guy name Dease, who passed away but left a bunch of paintings in his apartment. Josephina tries to make profit out of it, so do the others characters, and some supernatural forces start chasing the ones who try to make money out of his art.

Like all things, it comes up to our point of view to get most out of it. It is with arts, films, music etc. The fact that the movie uses this premise to tell us that each one of us can have unique experience and pleasure based on what we see or experience is how art is. Based on that, it is even hard to judge what is good or what is a bad art using the principle that every art is relative to our own experience.

Gilroy is very good to direct actors and write interesting personalities. He did that on his first movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, where he plays a psycho freelancer, and with Denzel Washington, who plays an attorney that has to take some extreme actions. This time, our main character Morf Vanderwalt, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, which by the way is one of the most exciting and versatile actors working today, plays a bisexual art critic and it comes back to the good script and metaphors written by the writer-director, how can a critic judge something if he doesn’t even know what he likes? It comes back to the principle that every art can represent something for each one of us.

The movie does a good job on telling us, that we have to see art with our own eyes and appreciate by ourselves, however the movie is a horror/thriller and I could not see myself investing on it in the first hour. The second act gets better, when Morf searches for answers and learn more about Dease past. With some melancholic sounds, and a contemporary design of the movie. It gives a good balance because of its contrast.

“Velvet Buzzsaw” is a movie that tells you the most important thing is to enjoy art, rather than try to monetize it. With a slow first act, I could not invest myself to much on it. Like his first movie back in 2014, “Velvet Buzzsaw” fails to tell a horror/thriller story in the first act, however it picks up in the second act, but it never lived up the expectations that I had knowing that I was watching a movie with a good director and such good cast.

“Velvet Buzzsaw” is streaming on Netflix.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdAR-lK43YU

 


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