Febr 12 2008
"MODIGLIANI"
What are your impressions?
"The life of an artist is complete happiness and entertainment...".
What do you think?
"The life of an artist is complete happiness and entertainment...".
What do you think?
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Going round a museum or a gallery and admiring a picture one cannot, but ask himself what drove an artist to paint, why he painted like that and what his life was like. And very often there appears an image of an artist, whose life we might envy: his works cost a lot, he is famous and lives a bohemian life.
We may think something like that about Modigliani at the beginning of the film of the same name. Anyway, this is a stereotype, which is broken during the film.
The action took place in 1919 in Paris, which had seen the greatest destruction of the WWI and in which there was an explosion of artistic expression. Writers, painters, sculptors and other members of bohemia fought, drank and took drugs as if they were not going to miss any kind of entertainment, any opportunity that life offered to them.
Modigliani, on the one hand, also drank, smoked and took drugs, but, on the other hand, we can see that there was a tragedy in his life: he was a gifted artist, but despite great talent fame and fortune eluded him; he didn’t achieve fame beyond the city’s creative circle. Though Modigliani stubbornly refused to alter his vision for the sake of sales he was troubled and disappointed by the lack of acceptance for his art and that’s why he tried to buffer his bruised ego with alcohol and drugs.
The film reveals the close proximity of genius to madness (as we see Modigliani waging a war against his demons and recollections) and excess (alcohol and drugs). I think to feel so much that you are inspired to create is a dangerous thing, because the extreme emotions (during the painting for instance) may lead a person to a tragic end.
Viewing the tragic fate of Modigliani and some other artists we may draw the conclusion that the artist’s isn’t always full of entertainment and happiness. Some people say, there is always a great tragedy at the bottom of every masterpiece.
The film left a deep and lasting impression on me. I think the director managed to capture that epoch and atmosphere, he also tapped the deepest reaches of my soul. In my opinion Andy Garcia did his best potraying Modigliani, I liked the acting very much.
To tell the truth I'm not an adherent of such film genre but this particular movie left a deep and lasting impression on me because it's extremely profound, it keeps you in suspense up to the last second, it illustrates how love can make a person step into eternity and hell, it makes you feel involved in the events going on the screen.
In my opinion, this movie gives an amazingly precise description of Paris in 1919 when it faced the greatest destruction known to the world at that time to its very suburbs. The battlefields of World War One were so close that the proximity to death and destruction engendered the greatest outbursts of human artistic creativity.
Besides Picasso, Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald etc. there were many other, equally important, though not as renowned, men and women striving to express this emotional turmoil of that period. One of these was the sculpture and painter Amedeo Modigliani.
Amedeo Modigliani belonged to the so called Bohemia whose members led an idle mode of life being determined to cram as much living as possible into every single moment. And Modigliani was not an exception - he drank and took drugs, in a word, he lived a bohemian life.
My personal opinion is that Bohemia was a peculiar social environment in which some trends in painting, for example abstractionism, came into being. I think it was under the influence of alcohol and drugs that this trend emerged. "Gernika" is a very illustrative canvas (in this respect) of Pablo Picasso.
But the life of Bohemia was complete happiness and entertainment only at first sight. As a matter of fact almost all of them were on the verge insanity and Modigliani was a personification of the figure of the romantic artist struggling with passion and madness.
All in all Modigliani can be ranked among the best films of Mick Davis.
All in all Modigliani can be ranked among the best films of Mick Davis.
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