Artful Dodger

There were a few questions on my mind after watching Art School Confidential. How close does this capture life as an art student? The main character, Jerome, says he wants to be the greatest artist of the twentieth century (note how we can't quite say twenty-first century yet, even as we're six years into the 21st century).

We see some evidence that he cares about his art, mostly in the time he spends when there's a break, but like many movies that's about a profession, in this case, art, it's often not about the profession at all. I recall Mike D'Angelo's review of Boogie Nights which is supposed to be about the heyday of the porn industry when the industry aspired to making movies that were more film than exploitation and bad plots. Yet, it spent relatively little time saying much about the industry itself, mostly, I imagine, there wasn't so much to say.

Similarly, Art School Confidential isn't particularly about art. It points to a kind of cynicism about art. Many of the artists are rather jaded or give the air of pretentiousness. John Malkovich's character spends all his time during the posing talking to people on the phone, presumably to get his own artwork on display. Steve Buscemi's character laments that once the artists hit it big, they don't talk to him. These two characters perhaps say as much about life as an artist, as anything.

But that's peripheral to the central part of the story, which is Jerome falling for Audrey. It's a story that's told often, about an average Joe seeking some kind of Aphrodite. The question is why this story picks a romance to center its story.

Indeed, Art School Confidential hits a lot of rather standard storylines. Only its setting is unusual. It brings up different stereotypes in art school than that in high school. The roommate situation resemble a film I saw called Freshman Orientation where the lead is also seeking the attention of a beautiful girl and pretends to be gay so he can get her attention (she has to find a gay guy to make fall for her, then dump him, as part of a sorority initiation--yeah, it's not a great movie). That guy's roommate turns out to be gay. And so does the guy in Art School Confidential, though in this film, everyone else is aware he's gay sooner than he is. That's admittedly something different, though I hear it happens.

Then, there's the weirdness attached to the strangler, adding a mystery element to a story. It's worked in to say that people appreciate art, not so much for its own sake, but because art is often judged good or bad by whoever thinks it's good or bad. The film makes the cynical point that it's better to be famous in art than to produce good art, perhaps because good art is so much a matter of opinion. At least, that's what's pushed.

Whether that's true, I don't know. People who are avid fans of music will tell you that good music is inherently good, that if you listen to a lot of music, you'll know good from bad, rather than it being a subjective opinion, thus, Radiohead is a better band than, say, Spice Girls.

What made Ghost World a superior film was that it didn't make music the central focus of the story. Instead, it's more about the lead female seeing the world in a different way, meeting a guy (played by Buscemi) that she wouldn't have met in high school, a place that had little meaning for her. That film also made jabs at art, but it was only part of a bigger story. Art School Confidential delves into that world. Despite good acting and reasonably original characters, I felt the film drifted into topics to make the story more interesting.

Somehow, I feel the creators of the film knew this too, but the film isn't done with a knowing wink. And, as I said in my previous post, as much as Clowes might have despised the kind of people that inhabit art school, he seems to place it on a higher pedestal than, say, police work. Art, at least, attempts to seek something higher, even if, in the end, that something higher appears to be fame (or infamy).

Jonah would normally be something of a stereotype in a teen high school movie. He'd be the prep guy that makes fun of the geek. In this film, once you find what he's really there for, you discover that he finds something in art that he doesn't find in police work, perhaps a kind of pride. In some ways, he's the hero of the film, because he's the innocent that likes the act of creating. Everyone else appears to do it for more selfish reasons. In an industry where originality and respect count for so much, people will do anything (and this film means it) to get that clout.

It's an odd twist on two genre films. I don't know that it's better for it.

I think I'll start giving two grades for movies. How much I enjoyed it (B+) and how good I think it is (B).