MODIGLIANI Rating: high 0 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
Mark Leeper
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Andy Garcia plays Amedeo Modigliani in a
disappointing account of his relationship with his
model and lover and with Pablo Picasso. The film
builds to a rather melodramatic finish. It may be
a true story, but it is a very familiar one,
nonetheless. Rating: high 0 (-4 to +4) or 5/10
Amedeo Modigliani as seen in this film is a self-indulgent, self-
destructive artist who ruins other people's lives. In many ways
Andy Garcia as Modigliani is a carbon copy of Ed Harris's
portrayal of Jackson Pollock in POLLOCK.
The scene is Paris just after the Great War, when many of the
great artists of the world came together. There is Pablo Picasso,
Diego Rivera, Jean Cocteau, Maurice Utrillo, Bartoleme Murillo,
Chaim Soutine, and Modigliani. The film begins with a woman
asking the audience, "Have you ever loved someone so deeply that
you are willing to go to hell for him?" Then the film flashes
back to one year earlier. Immediately I asked myself that if this
rhetorical question to the audience is a fiction, as it has to be,
how could you go back one year earlier from a rhetorical question?
Anyway, let that pass. The woman asking the question is Jeanne
Hebuterne (played by Elsa Zylberstein). Hebuterne was
Modigliani's lover and model. The cutting edge lights of modern
art meet and socialize and the center of this clique is Pablo
Picasso. Somewhat outside the circle is Modigliani who takes an
unreasoning hatred to Picasso, never explained but probably
inspired by jealousy. He is the bad boy of the artist scene and
tries to taunt Picasso with questions like, "How do you make love
to a cube?"
The center of writer-director Mick Davis's script is Modigliani's
stormy relationship with Hebuterne. Her father rejects the artist
because he is Jewish. Her mother thinks that it will do no good
to reject him because he is her daughter's destiny. (Do real
people talk like that?) Picasso and Modigliani seem to go from
liking each other to hating each other for no apparent reason.
Meanwhile Hebuterne has to make some very difficult choices
between her family and her lover. Modigliani himself is very
obviously self-indulgent to the point of using the people who love
him. He will not control his use of drugs and alcohol in spite of
his tuberculosis. It is hard to believe that everybody Modigliani
met was so famous and more likely that Davis likes to drop famous
names into the script. The delightful Miriam Margolyes (who also
graced BEING JULIA in the same Toronto film festival) plays
Gertrude Stein. At times the script borders on the pretentious.
In Davis's vision, Modigliani has conversations with an imaginary
figure of himself as a boy. The most engaging sequence of the
film is Picasso and Modigliani meeting the aging Renoir who
obviously has more wisdom than the two combined. But the film
moves to a melodramatic climax of rather banal irony.
Right in the middle of the film there is an abrupt change of style
with a strange montage of the great artists working. Everywhere
else in the film the photography is high contrast with subdued
earth colors. The sky is drenched in white. Suddenly in this
sequence we have a rainbow sky and music with a heavy beat with
what sounds like rap in French. It feels like it is from a
different film or perhaps a music video. It is a jarring
stylistic touch that seems really out of place.
If this were the only film ever made about a temperamental artist,
this film might have been more impressive, but the material is
just too familiar and we are given know reason to care if
Modigliani lives or dies. I rate this one high 0 (-4 to +4) or
5/10.
[As background on the character, here is an article on Modigliani
I coincidentally wrote in the past:
Amedeo Modigliani is considered to be one of the greatest portrait
artists of the 20th century and his paintings have sold for as
much as eight million dollars, yet during his short self-
destructive life of 36 years he knew very few moments of success
or recognition of his style. He often had to resort to painting
patrons of Paris cafes and bistros for as little as five francs a
picture. He burned himself out on drink, hashish, sex, and above
all his art. He left a distinctive and indelible impression on
modern art.
Modigliani was born in 1884 in Leghorn, Italy. His family were
prosperous Jewish merchants. As a sickly child he had to give up
on a higher education and instead studied art. Modigliani's uncle
paid for the art education but died when the young artist was 21.
The artist Amedeo decided to go to Paris, the Mecca of
contemporary art. There with a small allowance from his mother he
created art, conversed with some of the great artists of the day.
This was the time of the Dreyfus trial, when French anti-Jewish
sentiment was at its peak. To show solidarity with his fellow
Jews he signed his work "Modigliani--Jew."
The good-looking young man quickly became addicted to drink and
high life that he could scarcely afford. Most of his serious work
in this period was in sculpture of first wood (railroad ties), and
then limestone (building construction materials). He would often
use a geometric style that would carry over into his painting.
When World War I broke out in 1914, these supplies dried up and he
turned to painting to a much greater degree. He made his poverty
a little more comfortable as a cafe sketch artist. For a while he
lived with English poet Beatrice Hastings. He painted her more
than a dozen times and got side commissions painting portraits,
none paying very well. Drink and hashish often ate what profits
he made. But his work went from notable to exceptional. His
style in portraits was geometric form and elongated features.
By 1915 Modigliani's work was being exhibited at art shows and by
1916 a one-man show was scheduled, but canceled before it could
take place when police raided the art gallery and confiscated the
nude paintings that made up a substantial part of his work. His
work steadily developed, but the bad health of his youth had been
returning for years. In 1917 he married an art student and the
two would have been happy together were it not for his health and
his drinking. In 1918 Modigliani had a daughter. His work
started earning reasonable prices, but it was too late to save him
from his drinking and its effect on his health. Late in 1919 his
illness turned to tuberculosis and he began spitting up blood.
One story says that he went to a friend's house and said the
Jewish prayer for the dead for himself. In January he died and
his wife committed suicide the next day. As is so often the case
with artists, his work grew more and more popular after his death.
And today he is considered one of the great modern artists of the
century.]
Mark R. Leeper
mle...@optonline.net
Copyright 2005 Mark R. Leeper