Basquiat
With Jeffrey Wright, Claire Forlani, David Bowie, Dennis Hopper
Written and directed by Julian Schnabel (Miramax)
by William Ham
It wasn’t just the Gordon Gekkos of the world who profited from the greed-is-good ethic of the Reagan era. The downtown art scene of the ’80s, overindulgent by nature, cashed in just as fabulously and crashed just as precipitously. Few artists embodied the dangerous potholes on the fast track to success as instructively as Jean-Michel Basquiat. His was a story of rapid acceleration – from living in a cardboard box in Tomkins Square Park at 19 to Andy Warhol protegé at 21 to death by overdose at 27, Basquiat was a raw, exciting talent destroyed by the usual suspects – fame, media, and narcotics, forces of uncommon power that are hard to marshal once set in motion. Julian Schnabel, on the other hand, has cultivated one of the worst reputations in the art world (whatta feat) simply by luxuriating in the very same forces – words like “egomaniac” and “monster” are commonly used to describe him. When he announced plans to direct a film (his first) about his friend’s rise and fall, the worst was immediately assumed. What could be more nauseatingly self-indulgent than an artist who had never made a film making a film about another artist?
That said, the accomplishment of Basquiat is damn near miraculous. Schnabel has devised a wonderful film, a brilliant balancing act between art and artifice, a celebration of life rather than a dance with death. Basquiat (Jeffrey Wright) comes across as a mass of contradictions – a middle-class kid who opted for homelessness, the canny creator embraced as a noble savage by the patronizing patrons who made him rich but kept him in his place (would a white artist – any white artist – have to suffer epithets along the lines of “the Eddie Murphy of the art world”?), a talent large enough to inspire Warhol (David Bowie) to pick up the paintbrush again, yet torn between accusations of using and being used by him. Youth and fame are a lethal combination, yet through it all, Basquiat never lost his lust for life.
Schnabel knows this territory exceedingly well, which could easily have rendered this film inaccessible to all but the incestuous in-crowd. Thankfully, it is quite the opposite. Schnabel limns the territory with an economy and grace that more experienced directors would envy, and this casual assurance extends to the performers. Christopher Walken (as a TV interviewer) and Gary Oldman (as Schnabelgänger Albert Milo) have rarely been so relaxed and likable on screen. Claire Forlani, as Basquiat’s fair-weather girlfriend, sidesteps woman-scorned clichés with ease. Bowie is absolutely wonderful as Warhol – playing his knowing vacuousness for laughs, certainly, but with an affection and a touching hint of pathos far beyond the simple kick of one icon portraying another. Watching Basquiat and Warhol collaborating on a canvas, one sees beyond any opportunistic motives either may have been accused of, to the sweet friendship and vulnerability underneath.
Dennis Hopper, Michael Wincott, Benicio Del Toro, and (even) Courtney Love also register strongly in their roles. But it’s Wright’s stuff that gives Basquiat its heart. Hardly the driven obsessive of art-bio tradition, his Basquiat is casual, charming, a natural who can’t quite take his success as a given, which makes the slights of press, peers and public hurt more acutely and probably helped seal his eventual doom. Wright and Schnabel take loaded issues like the art community’s institutionalized racism and Jean-Michel’s drug addiction and present them without succumbing to melodrama – no mean feat these days. Funny, subtle, and light on its feet, Basquiat serves as a remembrance of things recent but long-gone and as an elegy for a man who gained the world but never quite lost his soul.
