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| Scene from Velvet Buzzsaw |
Ever since he made his directorial debut with Nightcrawler in 2014, director and writer Dan Gilroy has done incredible work in creating a contemporary Los Angeles that is rich with personality and culture that hasn't been this deftly explored since Paul Thomas Anderson hit the scene decades ago. With Velvet Buzzsaw, he continues to paint his canvas into a new style that blends mystery and horror into an art culture satire. With another compelling performance by Jake Gyllenhaal navigating the production, his film is another odd beast that shows what happens in a city full of ugly smog, con artists, and a self-important art culture doing its best to stand out in a claustrophobic city. For all of its faults at being a revelation on par with his debut, it continues to develop a style that is one of a kind and makes Los Angeles into a place for provocation and insight to a society that takes itself a bit too seriously.
As the film opens, there's already a desperation from its characters to find meaning. Morf (Gyllenhaal) is an art critic who wants to find the best art for his exhibit. He stares, doing his best to find some meaning in the splotches and esoteric art that hang upon a blank white wall. As the camera zooms around the room, the supporting cast is introduced and the story's underlying sense of competition becomes clear. There is a need to find art that will matter, and it wouldn't be surprising if the viewer was just as confused. The art on display doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's in the eye of the beholder, and those eyes have thousands to spend on giant orbs and robotic hobos that will titillate an audience to pop by for a visit. As much as it's absurd, there's something fulfilling to Morf and crew about picking something that's just odd enough to work.
In a sense, this is the crux of the movie. Gilroy's intent with the film is to create a world that looks strange from the outside, having viewers explore the abstract for deeper meaning. Why is Morf so eccentric? Better yet why should we care? The first hour of the film is a slow burn exploring a character with a sense of purpose that is vicarious. He doesn't create art, but instead comments on it. When his neighbor dies and leaves behind a treasure trove of art, he becomes invested in finding deeper meaning in the art, which depicts gauche imagery of haunting figures gasping for help. There's beauty in the ugliness, and he wants to make sense of it all. This is Los Angeles, where everyone is fighting for attention and his chance at being ahead of the curve means that he could be something greater.
The title comes from a tattoo on the back of a character's neck. Velvet Buzzsaw was her punk band that represented chaos before she became a controlling figure in the art industry. In a sense it's a metaphor for the film trying to control the unruly town. That would be the case if the art that Morf has possessed wasn't haunted, murdering anyone who looked at it wrong. Suddenly there's concern, making one wonder how the art could destroy the city. Gilroy's metaphor may be a bit surface-level from there, but what he does is embrace the macabre, where his horror is drawn from the vulnerable moments when art stops making sense and forces us to grapple with the internal. It's more haunting than any vision, and it becomes a powerful piece of the puzzle.
Gilroy's universe is defined by something dry, where the most emotional moments come over phone calls taken at traffic lights. There's a disconnect from each other that makes calling for help difficult, yet the desire to be seen contradicts everything. Gyllenhaal's second collaboration with Gilroy produces another performance of obsession. He wanders around the mechanical landscape, finding something that resembles sensibility. As a critic, he's required to make sense of the world that doesn't. While the film never quite reaches the campy potential of this scenario, it does live in a haunting world that is singular. The special effects leave plenty to be desired, but the concepts captures their own abstract painting form of madness. The way that the art consumes its victims is far from contrived and reflects a film that could've been. The film's clash of seriousness and ridiculous is at times too much to make what work not feel a little bit messy.
Still, the vision helps to expand upon Gilroy's vision of one city. Few directors have made it a task to explore a city's culture so thoroughly that it feels like its own universe. He has explored journalism, the legal system, and now art culture in ways that create a sense of a culture that is tightly wound but rarely seems to interact with each other. It's full of individuals striving to make a difference, but sometimes finding the animosity of their peers creating issues. For a community that is about success, the stories of getting there are far more compelling. Gyllenhaal continues to bring an empathy to the seediest of figures, bringing his charisma in a role that balances the comic with a perverse desire for something greater. While Gilroy hasn't quite captured the magic of his first film yet, he still has managed to create his own atmosphere, making a city come to life in different genres. Here he tackles horror with a sense of humor and an underlying sense of dread. For all of its faults, it still is an interesting exploration of the egos that inhabit Los Angeles. While it's possible that Gilroy will eventually explore characters beyond the west coast metropolitan environment, for now he's an auteur of a city in desperate need of one.
Velvet Buzzsaw is a weird film that never quite achieves its inspired lunacy while still managing to make Los Angeles feel like a landscape of a different kind of abstract art. In its place are egos colliding, impersonal phone calls trying to connect people to the latest happenings. There's a desperation in trying to force something into being pure, and it's the bigger theme of Gilroy's movie. He wants to not satirize art for being ridiculous, but he wants to ask why we look for meaning in something that's otherwise meaningless. By trying to find a control in the chaos, it forces a conflict in tone to arise. It's beautiful and strange, even if it's sometimes a bit plodding and self-involved. Gilroy's landscape is one of hidden art, and it pops up in ways to provoke the audience. Does it have meaning? That's for you to decide. It may be one of his weaker films, but he still shows a lot of promise into making Los Angeles look like something more than crime and traffic. It can be about the individuals who make the city matter. That would be quite something.
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