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Movies Forum Index » Movie Reviews Forum » Retrospective: I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
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| Author |
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| Dragan Antulov |
 Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2003 11:11 pm |
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I SHOT ANDY WARHOL (1996)
A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003
Life imitates art, even when the art happens to be art-themed movie.
In 1959 Roger Corman made A BUCKET OF BLOOD, trash classic
about loser who frequents bohemian artist circles only to find
alternative to his own artistic failure through homicidal acts. Less
than a decade after that, one of the world's greatest artists had
experiences with sinister resemblance to Corman's plot. Those events
are the subject of I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, 1996 drama written and
directed by Mary Harron.
The plot of the film is set in 1967, during the time of great social and
cultural turmoil of America, where all kinds of ultra-radical ideas
found receptive audience among snobs and those genuinely
disaffected with status quo. Valerie Solanas (played by Lilly Taylor)
qualifies among the latter category - unpleasant experiences in early
life made her not only lesbian, but radical and unapologetic man-
hater. College education only channelled those sentiments into a
personal philosophy, framed by her "SCUM Manifesto" - text that
preaches elimination of males as the solution of all world problems.
Solanas, however, has difficulty relaying that message to the public
and has to support herself by panhandling and prostitution. Her
transvestite friend Candy Darling (played by Stephen Dorff) gets her
in touch with Andy Warhol (played by Jared Harris), immensely
popular and fashionable avant-garde artist who gathers all kinds of
strange characters around his "Factory" studio. Warhol gives Solanas
a role in one of his experimental movies and even takes the copy of
her ultra-feminist play. That proves to be huge mistake when the
copy, which turned out to be the only one, gets lost, making Solanas
extremely angry at Warhol.
Originally devised as documentary and almost ten years in the
making, I SHOT ANDY WARHOL gives impression that its author
was truly familiar with the subject matter. Mary Harron leads the
plot of her film with great confidence and her experience with
documentaries allows her to familiarise modern audience with late
1960s New York without stuffing the film with too many details. In
all that, she receives great aid by Lilly Taylor, actress who became
sort of an icon for independent American cinema. Taylor plays the
difficult and complicated character of Solanas by showing her both as
a dangerous lunatic and as a woman who was driven to insanity by
oppressive and hypocritical society. The lack of awe towards Solanas
(who would later become sort of ultra-feminist icon) and Andy
Warhol (who created whole industry of turning the most banal and
trivial things into fashionable art) is probably the most valuable
element of the film. Because of that I SHOT ANDY WARHOL is both
tragic and funny; it approaches the characters with great sympathy,
yet it doesn't shy away from their flaws - some of which had tragic
consequences. Unfortunately, what Mary Harron fails to do with this
film is putting the whole Solanas-Warhol business into the broader
context of late 1960s. Perhaps the movie could have been much worse
without clear focus, but those who now view former "counter-
culture" as part of today's established culture would have been at a
loss. However, even with such shortcomings I SHOT ANDY
WARHOL is very interesting and entertaining film.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
Review written on October 15th 2003
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in
Croatian
http://www.ofcs.org - Online Films Critics Society
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X-RAMR-ID: 36027
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1207325
X-RT-TitleID: 1070692
X-RT-AuthorID: 1307
X-RT-RatingText: 7/10 |
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