Mark Reviews Movies: VELVET BUZZSAW

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 31, 2019

One could look at Velvet Buzzsaw as a satire of the world of contemporary art, but its observations, like the characters here, are so shallow and obvious that the movie doesn't have much of interest to say. The premise, for example, involves a collection of works of art, painted by an insane man, that kill anyone who profits from them. The main points should be clear: Art has become a commodity, and here, in a decidedly ridiculous way, is both art's literal revenge and an over-the-top hypothetical about the lengths to which people in this world would go to keep up that consumerist culture.

As a satire, writer/director Dan Gilroy's only says things that we've known for decades. The more intriguing element isn't what the movie has to say, though. It's in how Gilroy occasionally but openly embraces how ludicrous his core concept actually is. It's best, perhaps, to watch the end result as a broad comedy, in which a bunch of cutthroat and unethical and greedy people are picked off one at a time in some silly and sometimes gruesome ways.

The whole of the movie doesn't quite fit into that interpretation of the material, because, for all of the caricatures and soap opera-esque subplots and bloody deaths, Gilroy does seem to believe he has something deeper to say here. That ambition, strangely, is what prevents it from working as a pulpy, grotesque, and knowingly shallow horror comedy.

There's little by way of a plot. The characters and their foibles are of prime interest. In terms of a plot, though, there's Josephina (Zawe Ashton), who works at a premier Los Angeles art gallery run by and named after Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo). After one of her neighbors mysteriously dies in the hallway of their apartment building, Josephina investigates the dead man's apartment, only to find a treasure trove of previously unseen pieces of art.

The dead man, one Vetril Dease (whose curious name alone seems to elicit envy from everyone in the art world), was quite prolific in his decades of living and working in solitude, but his will demands that all of his art be destroyed upon his death. Taken by what she sees, Josephina steals the paintings instead.

Rhodora discovers her employee's discovery and threatens Josephina with legal action if she attempts to work on her own. The gallery takes possession of the art, and it quickly becomes the talk of the city.

Since the basic setup of this already has been made clear (The paintings are evil/possessed/murderous, and a bunch of people die after making money off them), it's more important to discuss some of the other characters here. We have Gretchen (Toni Collette), who works at an art museum but wants to branch out into private sales, and Jon Dondon (Tom Sturridge), who runs a competing gallery but doesn't seem to know a lick about art (He thinks a pile of garbage bags is a new piece). A couple of artists named Piers (John Malkovich), who hasn't created anything new in a while and lives off replicas of his old pieces, and Damrish (Daveed Diggs), a newcomer to the scene who has created a stir with a metallic sphere (which features into the movie's bloodiest death, which leads to the movie's most amusing punch line), are entranced by the raw power of Dease's paintings.

The most prominent character, though, in terms of screen time and influence is Morf Vandewalt, a powerful art critic who can make or break an artist's career. That character is played by Jake Gyllenhaal in the one performance that seems to understand just how absurd this material actually is. The actor's work, highlighting an effete attitude and flashes of uninhibited gesticulations, might seem excessive, but that's only in comparison to the other actors, who play their caricatures with straight faces. In truth, though, Gyllenhaal might be the only one who actually taps into the bizarrely eccentric spirit of Gilroy's humor here.

Since there are so many characters and so much time devoted to setting the broad strokes of the movie's satirical aims, it takes a while for the true nature of that humor—mischievous and weird—to emerge, and the story's assorted pieces—from relationship dramas to the internal politics of this world—don't always help to maintain that tone. When Gilroy dives into the horror elements of this tale, though, there's a certain cathartic thrill to the combination of plainly unpleasant characters, the preposterous circumstances of their eventual demises (A painting of monkeys working in an auto garage comes to life, and one character is hunted by a robotic hobo), and the general sense that Gilroy is clearly enjoying just how absurd his conceit is.

That feeling becomes more consistent as the movie progresses (partly because Gilroy seems to be working up the courage to go for it and partly because there's less narrative baggage as, well, more characters disappear), but so, too, does the feeling that we've been shortchanged more than a bit by Velvet Buzzsaw. After taking so much time establishing the movie's potential satire, the movie's ultimate messages about the merging of art and commerce don't add up to much, and after experiencing the wackiness of the later horror, we wonder why Gilroy took so much time to get to it.

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