“What the fuck do you believe in?”
Look, Willem Dafoe is an actor who could slip into any manner of personality and still make it function, but here, in Kent Jones’ cute but challenging Late Fame, his unwillingly retrospective Ed Saxberger could truly be played by no other person, as he recalls the once youthful version of his formative days, struck by the aches of his missed opportunities.
Dafoe’s Saxberger was once a legendary New York poet, whose forgotten works captivate the minds of an eccentric group of young artists who attempt to reignite his passion for writing. The only female figure in the film is the mysterious Gloria, who is played by the always lively Greta Lee, a pivotal figure to this film’s sense of rediscovery, and the reality that exists beyond such performance.
Late Fame is a film that functions best when it subverts the tropes that are constantly misconstrued in the Hollywood system. It is a movie about nostalgia; here, rather than acting as a sweet saviour, it plays as a mnemonic hindrance, a fateful reminder of decision. It has become easy for filmmakers to suck up to the supposed beauty and longevity of art as an overarching message of its existence, never taking it at anything more than face value. Jones’ vision here finds conflicting depth in its positioning between the actual past and the present reenactment of it. Our group of creatives are young and rich, hooked on the ways of old, feeding off of the wealth of their forbears, whilst continually slacking off the current zeitgeist of phone-addicted influencers, posing as artists.
This film finds its charm in rediscovering old habits, as an austere man tries to fit in with a pseudo version of today’s youth. Yet, despite its cute nature, there is always something off-putting about the disagreeable spirit of this group of characters that Saxberger interacts with; well, just the male ones, anyway. The film hovers at a level of agreement with these nerdy guys for a while before weaponising the soul of artists as something much more obnoxious than it lets on. Jones’ film isn’t just about the appearance of a now austere man, but rather a man coming to terms with his now waning relationship with the arts; nostalgia as a reminder of a past prospect that at first feels familiar, but is cleverly deceived under the guise of our typical comfort within the idea of retrospect. It comes back whether you like it or not, but here it fronts a pejorative facade, leading Saxberger into a group of snobbish young adults.
Jones’ film finds tension between its initially ambiguous stance toward our rich kids. It leans into that artistic comfort at first, before slowly peeling back the sad layers of truth to these ungrateful and lazy characters. Come the close, the film reaches a logical and full-circle conclusion, as if the answers to Jones’ questions were staring us in the face the entire time; we just refused to engage with them. The real driving force for this film’s most impactful moments is this hazy view of the contemporary literature scene; it never straddles a middle lane or positions itself on a moral high ground in sour fashion; it propels its cosy setting forward through the perspective of a man whose age and artistic angle have pushed him back into an area of actualisation; he recalls his past through photos, but this past materialised in the form of the present reveals an awkward sense of failure right at the heart of this movie.
Jones isn’t preaching about the influencer vs critic argument as a one-sided affair, but rather adding dimensions to its existence as a well-mannered reminder of artistic rediscovery, and the artificial persona of continually reminiscing on the past. Despite all this harkening for an age behind us, and hints of it coming back to us, we know very little about Ed Saxberger, and it should be left that way.
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In Cinemas from September 4th / Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, Jake Lacy, Graham Campbell, Edmund Donovan and Clark Johnson / Dir. Kent Jones / Vertigo Releasing / 15
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