The biographical cinema has a bad reputation, and it has earned it. There was a time when, systematically, the 'biopics' were dedicated to telling the whole lives of their protagonists and embodying all the essential moments in two hours of footage, and inevitably the resulting films almost always lacked texture.
Fortunately, that time has passed: today, the type of majority approach to the genre is to focus on an episode or isolated period of the character's existence.
That is also the approach adopted by actor Stanley Tucci in his fifth film as a director. It recreates the 18 days of 1964 that the painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti spent painting the portrait of the writer James Lord, and that the Lord himself evoked then with a mixture of affection and frustration in his memoir 'A Giacometti Portrait'. The goal of 'Final Portrait', we say, is to approach the creative philosophy and process of the artist without drawing clear biographical lines and resorting instead to a succession of quick strokes.
At the beginning of the movie Lord is about to return to New York. Giacometti lets him know that he would like to paint his portrait before his departure. It will only take a few hours, he assures her. However, once that time has expired the drawing has barely been started. Throughout the following days the model will be forced to postpone his flight again and again to continue sitting in front of an artist who is increasingly obsessive in his efforts to perfect the portrait. The problem, it does not take long to be clear, is that the perfection you seek is unattainable. We see Giacometti give form to the drawing only to erase it shortly after with a couple of strokes of a brush and thus be able to start it again, and in the process we discovered that, in reality,is unable to complete any of his works; in his opinion, even those that have made him famous are unfinished.
The main subject of 'Final Portrait', in fact, is the idea that some works of art need to be taken from their authors in order to be considered complete. We hear the Swiss confess unable to identify at what point the succession of lines drawn on the canvas can begin to be considered a drawing, and it is not unreasonable to imagine Tucci saying something similar about this film made of small lines and slight strokes that shape almost imperceptible they become a sketch.
Scene by scene we accompany Giacometti as he drinks coffees two at a time in the same bar as always, walks with his prostitute mistress and keeps sinuous talks with a confused Lord in which he makes Chagall and Picasso green. But above all we see it in his studio, a dilapidated room located in a Parisian alley that nobody would say belongs to one of the most celebrated artists of his time: a place with peeling walls and full of rubble and remains of paint and clay, and in which exaggeratedly slender sculptures are scattered in an apparently arbitrary way.
Giacometti himself is also pure disorder. Dressed like a vagabond, the clay clinging to his clothes and skin, he unfolds a generous catalog of nervous twitching gestures while smoking furiously one cigarette after another, and wisps of smoke rise above his unruly ruffled hair. Half tormented and half hedonistic, half self-critical and half egotistical , their ways in fact fit like a glove to the stereotype of mad genius - it's not the only obvious thing that a film that fills the accordion soundtrack to remind us that takes place in Paris. On his skin, comfortably installed in excess, actor Geoffrey RushIt brings much more color than depth. In any case, it is in his Lord profile that the film is especially superficial: Tucci does not even make the gesture of exploring the element of vanity that most likely propelled Lord as he accepted to submit to the chaotic and tedious process of Giacometti; as embodied by Arnie Hammer, the character remains from beginning to end installed between curiosity and perplexity. Apart from that, his biggest distinguishing feature is how well the suits are.
Ultimately, the film as a whole suffers from the same lack of depth and progression as its characters. Yes, Tucci avoids the clichés of biographical cinema, but on the other hand he does not replace them with an alternative source of dramatic energy and intensity. In the end, he fails to offer convincing reasons that justify what led him to decide that the best way to approach the figure of Alberto Giacometti was through this episode and not another.
You can watch Final Portrait Full Movie Online on iTunes, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.
Fortunately, that time has passed: today, the type of majority approach to the genre is to focus on an episode or isolated period of the character's existence.
That is also the approach adopted by actor Stanley Tucci in his fifth film as a director. It recreates the 18 days of 1964 that the painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti spent painting the portrait of the writer James Lord, and that the Lord himself evoked then with a mixture of affection and frustration in his memoir 'A Giacometti Portrait'. The goal of 'Final Portrait', we say, is to approach the creative philosophy and process of the artist without drawing clear biographical lines and resorting instead to a succession of quick strokes.
At the beginning of the movie Lord is about to return to New York. Giacometti lets him know that he would like to paint his portrait before his departure. It will only take a few hours, he assures her. However, once that time has expired the drawing has barely been started. Throughout the following days the model will be forced to postpone his flight again and again to continue sitting in front of an artist who is increasingly obsessive in his efforts to perfect the portrait. The problem, it does not take long to be clear, is that the perfection you seek is unattainable. We see Giacometti give form to the drawing only to erase it shortly after with a couple of strokes of a brush and thus be able to start it again, and in the process we discovered that, in reality,is unable to complete any of his works; in his opinion, even those that have made him famous are unfinished.
The main subject of 'Final Portrait', in fact, is the idea that some works of art need to be taken from their authors in order to be considered complete. We hear the Swiss confess unable to identify at what point the succession of lines drawn on the canvas can begin to be considered a drawing, and it is not unreasonable to imagine Tucci saying something similar about this film made of small lines and slight strokes that shape almost imperceptible they become a sketch.
Scene by scene we accompany Giacometti as he drinks coffees two at a time in the same bar as always, walks with his prostitute mistress and keeps sinuous talks with a confused Lord in which he makes Chagall and Picasso green. But above all we see it in his studio, a dilapidated room located in a Parisian alley that nobody would say belongs to one of the most celebrated artists of his time: a place with peeling walls and full of rubble and remains of paint and clay, and in which exaggeratedly slender sculptures are scattered in an apparently arbitrary way.
Giacometti himself is also pure disorder. Dressed like a vagabond, the clay clinging to his clothes and skin, he unfolds a generous catalog of nervous twitching gestures while smoking furiously one cigarette after another, and wisps of smoke rise above his unruly ruffled hair. Half tormented and half hedonistic, half self-critical and half egotistical , their ways in fact fit like a glove to the stereotype of mad genius - it's not the only obvious thing that a film that fills the accordion soundtrack to remind us that takes place in Paris. On his skin, comfortably installed in excess, actor Geoffrey RushIt brings much more color than depth. In any case, it is in his Lord profile that the film is especially superficial: Tucci does not even make the gesture of exploring the element of vanity that most likely propelled Lord as he accepted to submit to the chaotic and tedious process of Giacometti; as embodied by Arnie Hammer, the character remains from beginning to end installed between curiosity and perplexity. Apart from that, his biggest distinguishing feature is how well the suits are.
Ultimately, the film as a whole suffers from the same lack of depth and progression as its characters. Yes, Tucci avoids the clichés of biographical cinema, but on the other hand he does not replace them with an alternative source of dramatic energy and intensity. In the end, he fails to offer convincing reasons that justify what led him to decide that the best way to approach the figure of Alberto Giacometti was through this episode and not another.
You can watch Final Portrait Full Movie Online on iTunes, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.