In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
Reviewing a biopic is always tricky, and doubly so when the subject 1) comes from a different culture than the filmmaker (Jean-Michel Basquiat’s parents were Haitian and Puerto Rican and Catholic, while writer-director Julian Schnabel is white and Jewish) and 2) the subject is no longer around to defend himself (Basquiat died from a heroin overdose in 1988). I don’t know how accurate the portrait of Basquiat presented in this film is, but it may be best to set that question aside because a biopic is still a fictional creation, not a documentary, and it’s quite likely that the resulting portrayal may have more to do with the person making it than with its ostensible subject.
Such is the case with Basquiat, which is most definitely a Julian Schnabel film and also a portrait of someone who may or may not be similar in character and manner to the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. That character is the first starring film role for Jeffrey Wright, who previously won a Tony for his performance in Angels in America and an Emmy for the same role in the television version of that play, and I have no criticisms whatsoever of Wright’s performance nor do I have any doubt that he was playing the character as Schnabel intended it. Does it reflect the real Basquiat? Hard to say, particularly since Schnabel is much more interested in capturing the surface of Basquiat and other characters in this film rather than trying for any real depth.
Schnabel does something similar with his portrayal of the downtown milieu where Basquiat lived and made his art—although shot on location in New York City, everything is just too scrubbed up and pretty for the time and place portrayed, when the city’s near-bankruptcy lay not that far in the past and the crack epidemic was just getting going. Trust me, I lived there under much more favorable circumstances than Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the city could be a very scary place—and how much more so it must have been for someone who is basically living by his wits and squatting with whomever will shelter him, when he’s not literally living out of a cardboard box. So this is Julian Schnabel’s version of New York, and that’s fine, as long as you don’t mistake it for the real thing.
Half the appeal of this film is its evocation of the downtown art scene, and that means a lot of characters shuffling on and off screen, some based on real people and some fictionalized or composites. David Bowie is instantly recognizable as Andy Warhol thanks to the polyester wig, Michael Wincott plays the art critic Rene Ricard and delivers the film’s opening narration, an extremely buttoned-up Dennis Hopper plays the Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, and Elina Löwensohn and Parker Posey play the gallery owners Annina Nosei and Mary Boone. Composites include Benny Dalmau (Benicio del Toro), who gets a lot of screen time as Basquiat’s buddy, the waitress Gina (Claire Forlani) who stands in for a lot of Basquiat’s girlfriends (this is not a film particularly interested in female characters), and Courtney Love as Big Pink, who represents any number of party girls. Less successfully, Schnabel inserts himself into this film through the character Albert Milo (Gary Oldman), who could easily have been left on the cutting room floor.
There’s one thing unique about this Criterion release, at least in my experience: it includes both the original theatrical release, which was shot in color, and a black and white version of the same film. Both are worth watching and, despite Schnabel’s effective use of color in the theatrical release, I think the black and white version works better, in part because it avoid the excessive prettiness of the color version while bringing Schnabel’s superb sense of frame composition to the fore.
It’s one of life’s ironies that while Schnabel followed the more conventional route to becoming an artist in modern America—he earned a BFA from the University of Houston and participated in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of Art, while Basquiat dropped out of high school and was self-taught as an artist—Basquiat is by far the more successful painter. Case in point: one of his works sold for over $110 million, the most ever paid at auction for an artwork by an American. Plus, you almost certainly know Basquiat’s distinctive style, but Schnabel’s? I’m more connected to the art world than many people, and I couldn’t pick a Schnabel painting out of a lineup. So you could say fate divided up life’s rewards among them: Schnabel got a long life (he’s currently 73 and still going strong) and respectable career, while Basquiat changed the art world but died before his 30th birthday. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1260
Technical details: 108 min; color; screen ratio 1.85: 1; English.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray (1 disc)
Extras: audio commentary with Julain Schnabel and curator Guilia D’Agnolo Vallan; 2024 black and white release of the film; new interview with Jeffrey Wright (he talks a lot about his career as well as this film); 1996 Charlie Rose interview with Schnabel and David Bowie; the film’s trailer; booklet including an essay by film scholar Roger Durling.
Fun Fact: Schnabel was a successful painter before taking up film (this is his first feature as a director) and, like Basquiat, usually worked on large canvases.
Parting Thought: Basquiat’s estate did not give permission to use images of his work in this film, so the “Basquiat paintings” you see were made by Schnabel and his assistant Greg Bougin. They certainly faked me out, and there have been some notable examples of fake Basquiats being sold as the real thing. Is it a compliment or an insult to the painter to say that his style is both immediately recognizable and easily imitated?
