Dalíland
Striking performances are rendered in Mary Harron’s portrait of an ageing artist.
Avida Dollars: Sir Ben Kingsley
When so much effort has gone into a film it’s a shame that what emerges should feel hollow. Sadly that is the sense that I got from this film about the artist Salvador Dalí despite being able to find some substantial pleasures in it. In particular the casting of the leading roles could hardly be more adroit and the quality of the acting is such that the film cannot be dismissed as a dud. Nevertheless, two factors (the decision to concentrate on Dalí’s later years but for a few flashbacks and the fact that the filmmakers seemingly could not afford the licence fee that would have enabled them to show his work on screen) combine to make one all too aware of the limitations in Mary Harron’s film.
Harron is probably still best known for her film of the controversial novel American Psycho (2000) while four years earlier her debut feature, I Shot Andy Warhol, had given her a reputation as an edgy independent filmmaker. It may be due to that reputation that some critics have expressed disappointment over Dalíland being told in a standard, traditional way including the invention of a central character whose chief function is to take the audience into Dali’s world. Personally I have no objection to that approach, not least because the man in question, a gallery assistant in New York who in 1974 is invited to become Dalí’s assistant, is played by Christopher Briney. Apparently at one stage Ezra Miller was due to take this role but another film project intervened and he ended up playing only a smaller role in this movie, that of the young Dalí in the flashbacks. Leaving aside current issues regarding Miller’s personal life, it can be said that this was for the best all-round. Miller himself is totally successful in making evident the spark in the young Dalí that points to the artist and the man that he would become. As for Briney, an actor blessed with astonishingly good looks, he is ideal for the role of the fictional James Linton who is drawn into the Bohemian world of the elderly Dalí and of his Russian wife, Gala.
The outstanding German actress Barbara Sukowa plays Gala who, previously married to the poet Paul Éluard, became Dalí’s muse as well as his wife thus creating an unbreakable bond. This was so despite her propensity to having affairs, one being the long-term one featured in the film with the actor Jeff Fenholt (Zachary Nachbar-Seckel) who was playing the lead in the Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Her behaviour in this respect was encouraged in part by Dalí’s sexual inhibitions with women, inhibitions that led him to approving Gala’s other relationships and to his seeking stimulation in voyeurism. The screenplay for Dalíland written by Harron’s husband, John C Walsh, certainly captures something of Gala’s rather extraordinary character, but it is Dalí himself who comes across as the most vividly realised figure both in the writing and in the excellent performance of Sir Ben Kingsley. Fully capturing the eccentric celebrity image cultivated by Dalí, he manages also to suggest an underlying sadness in the painter’s old age with youth long gone and art critics starting to ignore his work. Furthermore, Gala’s extravagances were then undermining his financial situation even as he lived in the St Regis Hotel and was notorious for his parties there.
But, if all this is well and good in its presentation here, the fact remains that this narrow focus is not what Dalí and Gala really require. The film does touch on the commercial side of art and on the dubious enterprises of Dalí’s business manager, Captain Moore (Rupert Graves), which saw Dalí signing blank canvases that could encourage forgeries. Yet, like the rest of what we see in Dalíland, it all feels like effective background material of the kind which would have provided strong support for a wider, deeper look at the lives of these two while also studying the character of an artist whose surrealist talent created memorable art but who no less significantly became a precursor of the celebrity figure who feeds on media publicity. An in-depth look at both sides of Dalí is what is needed to give a film about him a real backbone and it’s the lack of that which renders Dalíland disappointing regardless of those aspects of it that display real skill.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Barbara Sukowa, Christopher Briney, Rupert Graves, Ezra Miller, Andreja Pejic, Alexander Beyer, Mark McKenna, Zachary Nachbar-Seckel, Avital Lvova, Matthew James Ovens.
Dir Mary Harron, Pro Daniel Brunt, Chris Curling, Edward R. Pressman, Sam Pressman and David O. Sacks, Screenplay John C. Walsh, Ph Marcel Zyskind, Pro Des Isona Rigau, Ed Alex Mackie, Music Edmund Butt, Costumes Hannah Edwards.
David O. Sacks Productions/Zephyr Films/Popcorn Group/Serein Productions/NeonProductions-Kaleidoscope Entertainment.
97 mins. USA/France/UK. 2022. US Rel: 9 July 2023. UK Rel: 11 September 2023 (Icon Film Channel) and in cinemas 13 October 2023. Cert. 15.
