13 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[10 of 13]
(January 2019)
"Look, I came to the museum because I wanted to change the world through art. But the wealthy vacuum up everything,
except crumbs. The best work is only enjoyed by a tiny few. And they buy what
they’re told. So, why not join the party?”
Dan Gilroy’s Velvet
Buzzsaw takes place in the dangerous waters of the art world, where most
everyone is only too eager to deploy a scathing remark or a catty side-eye
while they’re busy co-opting an artist’s true passion to make a quick buck.
It’s a world populated not just by artists, but by
all the other personalities that tend to accrete around them, like critics or
gallery owners.
The former is represented by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Morf
Vandewalt, an inveterate critic who’s apparently unable to switch off his being
“selective,” even for funerals, while Rene Russo’s Rhodora Haze is one of the
latter. Once a self-described anarchist, from her days as a member of the punk
band Velvet Buzzsaw, Rhodora is now a “purveyor of good taste,” as the owner of
Haze Gallery.
They’re only two of the noteworthy collective of characters
(and performers: Toni Collette! John Malkovich!) in this tale of art taking its
overdue revenge on the industry that’s savagely exploited it, oh so cruelly and
elegantly.
“Let me fill you in.
“All this… it’s just a safari to hunt the next New Thing and eat it.”
As an artist, as someone who creates, that
dizzyingly high target you’re always aiming for is to create art that speaks to the audience, that can touch them in ways they never expected.
There’s a moment in the film that encapsulates that
feeling masterfully, where Malkovich and Daveed Diggs--who play an established
artist who’s seen better days and a new up-and-comer, the old school and the
new--stare enraptured (or “ensorcelled,” as Morf would have it) at a piece of
art in a gallery.
Velvet Buzzsaw takes that idea, and
tosses it headfirst into horror movie territory as the art of one Vetril Dease
proves to be art that can touch you hard enough to kill you.
It’s art that--to use Rhodora’s words--charges and
mauls and devours.
It’s art that eats its audience.
Or, more to the point, it’s art that eats anyone
who tries to profit off it in ethically questionable ways.
“We don’t sell durable goods, we peddle perception. Thin as a bubble.”
As much as Velvet
Buzzsaw is a horror movie, complete with gruesome, gory deaths, what I feel
is more noteworthy is that it’s also a savagely funny satire of the art world
and its denizens.
Gilroy’s script impishly skewers an industry that
constantly co-opts new voices and visions into its maw, all in the name of the
Almighty Dollar, turning them into Brands and using them until they’re no
longer of any worth, then tossing them out for some other bright new shiny
talent.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
It’s a world at once terrible and ludicrous, where
a bunch of plastic garbage bags or a dead body in pools of blood can be
mistaken for contemporary art.
A world where the Critic is God (the one and only
Voice that can apparently determine a piece’s beauty and worth, but also a
Voice only too ready to spew cruel and merciless invective), a world where true,
passionate creativity and artistic integrity are forever haunted by the “money
question.”
“So much easier to talk about money than art.”
As Rhodora points out to a Morf who’s already left
the room (and as the one sheet’s tagline says), all art is dangerous.
Or at least, art is meant to be dangerous.
Art should provoke and challenge, inspire and
elevate.
Instead, it’s become mired in an industry that’s
far more interested in “tax issues,” the promise of “significant appreciation,”
and “cutting-edge analytics to maximize deal flow and global demand.”
The industry has filed down the teeth of art, all
the better to sacrifice it at the altar of commerce.
Velvet Buzzsaw imagines all those
teeth grown back, turned into razor sharp fangs.
“Well, I’m going to meet with your board tomorrow and suggest a
reduction in the Emerging Artist Exhibit.
“They don’t sell any tickets anyway.”
Parting Shot: Pat Healy (familiar to these parts
from past ¡Qué horror! titles Cheap Thrills and Tales of Halloween) appears briefly as the “Man From Perlack.”
(Velvet Buzzsaw
OS courtesy of impawards.com.)
