5 out of 7
Art School Confidential goes a long way out of its way to make a very simple, but needed point: Every artist has his/her muse. Pulling from the old cliché of Pablo Picasso and his mistress/muse, Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) journeys to art school only to find that it is filled with stereotypes and cardboard cut outs of artists. He, however, does not want to give up on his notion of art, however romantic it may be, and is edified in his belief when he meets Audrey Baumgarten (Sophia Myles). She instantly becomes the woman he pines for and who inspires his art. Sadly, though, he cannot have her.
The film’s message is a great one, but unfortunately it gets quickly bogged down with a lot of boring plot (i.e. Jerome’s American Pie-esque search for a sexual partner and a serial murderer around campus). These elements add very little to the overall moral, which seems then to maybe even confront the moral for now there exists a piece of art, made, assumably, by an artist(s) (Daniel Clowes writes and Terry Zwigoff directs in a return of the same guys who brought us Ghost World), who would then have their own muse(s), but then they create an art that gives a message of the importance of a muse and surrounds it with a bunch of gibberish that detracts from the message. See the conundrum?
Ultimately, though, romantic notions of art are always necessary and that Jerome learns that the reality of art needs more than a muse may be implicit in the movie’s need for subplots. Basically, if one is going to create a film that is really an essay on the essence of art, one had better surround it with some action.
Art School Confidential goes a long way out of its way to make a very simple, but needed point: Every artist has his/her muse. Pulling from the old cliché of Pablo Picasso and his mistress/muse, Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) journeys to art school only to find that it is filled with stereotypes and cardboard cut outs of artists. He, however, does not want to give up on his notion of art, however romantic it may be, and is edified in his belief when he meets Audrey Baumgarten (Sophia Myles). She instantly becomes the woman he pines for and who inspires his art. Sadly, though, he cannot have her.
The film’s message is a great one, but unfortunately it gets quickly bogged down with a lot of boring plot (i.e. Jerome’s American Pie-esque search for a sexual partner and a serial murderer around campus). These elements add very little to the overall moral, which seems then to maybe even confront the moral for now there exists a piece of art, made, assumably, by an artist(s) (Daniel Clowes writes and Terry Zwigoff directs in a return of the same guys who brought us Ghost World), who would then have their own muse(s), but then they create an art that gives a message of the importance of a muse and surrounds it with a bunch of gibberish that detracts from the message. See the conundrum?
Ultimately, though, romantic notions of art are always necessary and that Jerome learns that the reality of art needs more than a muse may be implicit in the movie’s need for subplots. Basically, if one is going to create a film that is really an essay on the essence of art, one had better surround it with some action.
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