Review: "Art School Confidential"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

** stars (out of four)
102 minutes, Now Showing

“Art School Confidential” is moving along quite well, a well-managed train on a smooth trip, for the first half or so of its running time. Then someone puts a penny on the tracks. It is a searing and insightful depiction of art students in their first steps toward a world where almost no one necessarily knows anything about what they’re doing, and teachers who give contradictory advice and really have no artistic basis from which to be giving that advice, otherwise they wouldn’t have to be teaching. Then it all goes very, very, very wrong.

Let’s start with the good stuff, like the movie does. It stars Max Minghella as Jerome, a young artist who proclaims in his grade school class that he wants to be the next Picasso, not so much for the level of the art itself but because he wants to meet women. Not an uncommon goal for the artistically inclined. He enrolls in a prestigious if small east coast art school, not because of its reputation and pedigree, but because of the attractive female model (named Audrey, played by Sophia Myles) who is nearly naked in the brochure.

The first scenes at the school have an oddly John Hughes feel to them. Jerome meets his roommates, one of whom (Ethan Suplee) is a budding filmmaker whose overly pretentious work adds a second level to the satire. He enrolls in his first classes, where it’s clear he has a real gift in his form, but never draws a single compliment from his peers or his professors, who prefer to praise works which have no substance but a lot of flash. One student’s work looks eerily like they had simply let their infant scribble for five minutes with crayons, but it is praised as “daring.” Another simply draws a car in ink and paints red in the background, and is hailed as a master. When Jerome asks his professor named Sandiford (played with great insight by John Malkovich, also co-producer) for advice, he instructs him to experiment, try different styles, see what works. When he does, Sandiford criticizes him for being “all over the map.”

The frustrations in the classroom are balanced against Jerome’s success in meeting and wooing (to a degree) the beautiful Audrey, who is flattered by his work and begins to take to him as a result. When she also seems to show interest in the talentless Jonah (the creator of the aforementioned automobile masterpiece, played by Matt Kessler), it crushes Jerome, who begins to become more desperate in his artistic outlashings. He also is introduced to Jimmy (Jim Broadbent), a grizzled artist whose world-weary wisdom gives Jerome some direction.

And it’s right about here that the compliments must stop. Because right here is where the plot, which had been fine on its own, thank you, begins to be overtaken by an utterly unnecessary and ludicrous sub-plot about a serial killer who has been stalking the campus and strangling people. I am at a loss to explain why the brilliant director Terry Zwigoff (“Crumb,” “Ghost World,” “Bad Santa”) felt as though this whole angle was worth preserving. I haven’t read the original story by Daniel Clowes (who also wrote “Ghost World”), and maybe the killer worked better as a plot device on the page. On film, however, it is a massive violation of the tone and characters which have been established, and causes more than a few of the aforementioned characters to make decisions and choices that seem completely out of character for them, not to mention idiotic.

Another problem is that Jerome never emerges as a likeable character. I do not demand that the leads of a film be easily sympathetic or anything, but I do demand that they at least demonstrate some semblance of individuality. In the beginning of the film, Jerome’s seeming non-personality fits with the character’s fish-out-of-water confusion with everything that is going on. But by the end, when he’s making some truly bizarre decisions and some very alarming events are occurring, he’s still the vacant lot of emotion he was at the beginning. I’m more inclined to blame Zwigoff than Minghella on this one - there are moments of fire where you get the impression that Jerome COULD have been more interesting, but apparently it was a storytelling choice to keep him muted. A weak storytelling choice, in my opinion.

Seeing "Art School Confidential" with my close friend Stephanie (an amazing artist who has spent much time in art classes) was a great experience, as I could see through her eyes just how well the early part of the film worked as a satire of the whole of the art world. She was whispering to me frequently how dead-on accurate the portrayals of so many characters, situations and events were. For me, that simply underscored what a disastrous choice the plot developments of the film’s second half were. Zwigoff really had something here, and it just got away from him. He has amazing films in his past, and no doubt has amazing films in his future. In the present, however, all he has is a great idea gone wrong.