Though I had misgivings about I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho, I think director Mary Harron did as good a job as anyone could have with the source material—the former, a retelling of the attempted murder of the original Pop Artist, the latter, an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s snarky, grisly bestseller—and I looked forward to this investigation into the late period of another modern superstar painter, Salvador Dali, thinking it was right up Harron’s alley. I have no idea how straight it is with the facts, but the whole manufactured mood of mid-70s/early 80s decadence-for-the-sake-of-decadence is so flat and ordinary that I wonder what she actually put into it. For sure, Dali, as played by Ben Kingsley (and by Ezra Miller as a youth in flashback), is a believably odd bird, obsessed with his status as the most famous painter in the world but still possessing a distinctive artistic sensibility, not to mention genuine talent. But the movie is premised on Dali’s and his wife Gala’s abnormal fixation on money and libidinal fulfillment that never feels honest, and while I would assume this is a comment on the couple’s self-delusion as self-made celebrities, the movie fails to engage on even a salacious level. These people could not possibly be as pitiable as the movie makes them out to be.

The story is mostly told through the agency of a young man named James Linton (Christopher Briney), who, in 1974 when the first part of the movie takes place, has recently been hired by the New York gallery that handles the Spanish painter’s work. The couple is soon to arrive for their annual residency at one of the most expensive hotels in the city, and it is Linton’s job to make sure Dali produces something for sale, because he and Gala (Barbara Sukowa) spend tons of cash on parties and orgies (which they don’t physically participate in) and taking care of younger would-be lovers—in Dali’s case a woman who is rumored to be transsexual, in Gala’s case the fatuous young man currently playing the lead in the Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Linton has his hands full trying to persuade the temperamental artist to put brush to canvas and making sure Gala doesn’t drive her nonetheless devoted husband to suicide while bankrupting the gallery. If Dali has mastered the art of surrealism, Russia-born Gala has done the same with the science of intimidation, and at least Sukowa’s scenes have a whirlwind quality that keeps the story stumbling forward. Otherwise, it would be nothing but a series of enervated, hackneyed anecdotes. Meanwhile, Linton, an innocent from Idaho who came to New York to be an artist himself and lost his nerve, is initiated into the New York demimonde (though one that is represented by Alice Cooper, always Bud in hand, rather than Lou Reed). You’ve seen this kind of coming-of-sexual-age thing a million times before.

The latter part of the film takes place in the mid-80s after Gala has died and Dali is in a state of catatonic dotage. Linton shows up to help out in ways that are never properly explained, but it allows the scriptwriter, John C. Walsh, to address Dali’s place in cultural history as either a visionary or a charlatan. That he leaves it up to the viewer to decide is the film’s ultimate cop-out. Daliland is the kind of movie that makes you run to Wikipedia only because it left you feeling so unsatisfied. 

Opens Sept. 1 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musahinokan (03-3354-5670), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

Daliland home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Sir Reel Limited