No Expectations

I'm still putting off writing some more about Jacques Rivette. It's a poser - whether to knock out quick impressions of the films, or try to work up an essay, or - I don't know - make a list of things: doubles, shadows and ghosts, artists and actors, old houses, the way women walk, conspiracies, cats, park benches, the rooftops of Paris, women who don't need men and men who are willing to live with that, bad fathers, desks and desk drawers, overnight bags - some of the things you will find in his films. We shall see.

In the meanwhile: a film: this, February, is, in film terms, the cruelest month - what you have in the theaters this time of year - man. Once you see the oscar bait, there ain't much left: that is my explanation for seeing Factory Girl. What else is there? Alas... Factory Girl is a sort of biopic about Edie Segdwick, starring Sienna Miller, directed by George Hickenlooper. Hayden Christenson turns up attempting to impersonate (Not) Bob Dylan - Guy Pearce appears in the less thankless role of Andy Warhol. The film as such isn't worth much, though it's harmless enough - a kind of haphazard style, lots of cheesy montage sequences, little tricks with the film stock, some gestures towards fake versions of Warhol's films... The story is ridiculous, with Warhol and crowd as dope fiend vampires, frittering their talents on soup cans and sucking poor Edie dry, while not-Dylan represents all that is pure and good and real, offering Edie a Way Out, but she doesn't take it, alas.... Miller does her best with this nonsense, but there's not much to do, and her best isn't anything special. Christenson is dreadful beyond compare, though whether that should be blamed on him or the script is an open question. (In either case, Dylan did well to stop them using his name - beyond being portrayed wretchedly, not-Dylan comes off not only as an insufferable prick [which Dylan proper might well have been - he certainly liked to take the piss, from what I've heard], but as a self-righteous, self-important tiresome prick. That seems less likely.) This leaves the film ripe pickings for Pearce to steal, and steal it he does.

He has an advantage: Warhol did a fine job of turning himself into one of his art works. He emptied himself of all the usual signs of emotion and personality, made himself blank and bland as his images. Because of this, when actors play him, they have to stick to his presentation of himself - the look, the mannerisms, the voice - the intentional blandness. Dylan, being gnomic and strange, mysterious and secretive, dropping hints and making references to be decoded and all, invites actors and writers to interpret him, to try to parse him out - at least that happens here: not-Dylan has all the signifiers of Dylan, but with all the hints and poses filled in with cliches. Godawful dreck results. But Warhol - and Pearce as Warhol - gets away from that. Even trying to slip the odd humanizing quality to the poor man has to pass through his persona, through his version of himself: whatever you do, you have to do in Warhol's terms, because he took away any other terms to do it with. And because of this - Pearce gives something completely different than the rest of the cast - he gives a kind of collaboration. (Hey! another item for my Rivette list!) With Warhol - his performance feels like a collaboration with Warhol, not with the script or the director of this film.

That's a bit of a lost opportunity: there's a chance, making a film about an artist (or group artists) to make the film collaborative, even if the artist isn't actually around for it. To work off the art, to incorporate it into the film. Hickenlooper tries to show us some of Warhol's art - a few iconic images, and a few recreated clips from the films. This could have been interesting - it isn't. Partly because he screws up the clips - mostly by abandoning their style - that impassive camera, the awkward zooms and focus shifts, and most of all, their duration. Some of it he screws up by shooting the act of shooting - thus freeing the camera to be pointless, and reducing the films to their silly behavior... Some of it he screws up by shooting the film being screened - and moving the camera around, zooming in to create closeups and such that Warhol (and Morrissey later on) stayed away from. It's anti-collaborative: it's trying to assert control over the image, over Warhol's art. (I'd say over not-Dylan's as well, except there isn't any actual Dylan (or not-Dylan) music in the film. There is some not-Velvet Underground music played over a portrayal of VU&N - complete with cymbals! in 1966!! - I mean - he has to know better than that!) The only element of the time that escapes this inanity is Pearce as Warhol.

Now - again I say - it's a missed opportunity. There are some odd moments where things creep in that might have been more interesting. Bits of dialogue - Warhol's remarks about just watching people, letting them be what they were... or the bits referring to his background as a coal miner's son, or his oft-remarked work ethic. That sort of direct, unpretentious work ethic is central to Warhol's value - his art gains power through repetition, through time, through the iteration of it. That, and again - the sense that art was collaborative: a gathering of people, working off one another - which runs through this period of Warhol's work. You get those hints - from scraps of dialogue, and from Pearce, I'd say - of the class dynamics under things: Warhol is strongly associated with work here (a notion common to accounts of the factory), and comes off as tougher, more subversive than the story wants to make him. There are hints - but the film doesn't really develop them. Instead, the words (sometimes), and Pearce, and Warhol himself - haunt it. The ghost of a better film...