Jean-Michel Basquiat: The radiant child

Well, my first film at this year's Atlantic Film Festival turned out to be a winner. I don't know how wide a circulation this documentary will be getting, but if you have the chance to see it, I highly recommend not missing it, even if like me, you're not particularly involved with art or the art world. I had seen the earlier Julian Schnabel film simply called Basquiat, which isn't a documentary, and found it very compelling but now I really do prefer this one. We're lucky that the director, Tamra Davis, was a friend of Basquiat and filmed interviews and lots of other footage of him so that we get a rich picture of this amazingly talented, intelligent and sophisticated young man, who emerged from seemingly nowhere first as simply one of many graffiti artists in NYC and then became the darling of the art world and a close friend of Andy Warhol. Sadly, like many others he got involved in drugs and died of an overdose at the age of 27. I haven't heard why Davis waited till now, over 20 years later, to make this film, but she did a great job of putting it all together, including a wonderful jazz soundtrack that goes perfectly with the film.

The American

I've been away for a while at a month-long meditation retreat, so I may have missed some films during August and early September, but now it's the Atlantic Film Festival season as well as the start of the Fall/Winter generally more interesting films time of year, so you may be hearing from me more often. I went to see The American after having heard that a few people I know really disliked it. But the reviews I read continued to make it sound interesting and so I followed my gut instinct. I still don't feel quite as clear on some of what happened in the film as Roger Ebert did, but I do agree with his very favourable review of it. I especially applaud George Clooney's tour de force acting performance, which included very little dialogue. Briefly, the film is about a professional hit man (Clooney) who's either completely cool and in control or constantly nervous and on edge, or both. The setting is Italy, mainly a small town where he's working on a job of preparing a very specialized weapon for a client; all the arrangements are made by his boss/master, with whom he has very terse communications by phone. As described in the reviews, the film has very stark, minimalist and Zen-like feel to it. The scenery was compelling though not the green lushness one often associates with Italy but in general rather craggy hills with colourless villages built on them. I thought all the cinematography was also excellent. I didn't find it a terribly violent film, though of course because of the plot and characters, there are a few scenes of shootings. Anyway, this film is obviously not for everyone; it doesn't have a thought-provoking message but I found engrossing and haunting and a very interesting character study.