
Even during his short life lived in misery, cut short in 1920 at the age of just 35 by tuberculosis, the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani, known for his distinctly lanky, almond-eyed interpretations of the human form, managed to find some fame. At the age of 61, Johnny Depp has readily outlived Modigliani and has also outlived him in terms of being famous during his lifetime. Yet one cannot help but feel an awful pang of sympathy towards that most irresistible of archetypes, that of the great and the idiosyncratic artist who battled to make his mark on the world, but was in fact always rendered unappreciated in his days this is a sentiment that permeates almost tenderly and almost effortlessly throughout “Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness”, a film supposedly about Modigliani but which is really Takeshi Kitano’s take on tragedy as Kitano’s first foray into directing in the past thirty years. The aspects of the film are blunt yet ignore the subject matter and its numerous afternotes: to create art away from the reach of the established financial and mainstream aesthetic ideals.
While the storyline is based on tragedy, it is more humorous than one might expect and much simpler to comprehend compared to what its full title may convey. Considering the trajectory of Depp’s career in Europe, “Modi” is likely to attract distributors there as it is expected to be more popular than in other parts of the world. (The film was screened outside the competition at the Sydney Film Festival.) For now, it seems nerves will be a thesaurus.com and spell.com to those who are in any way associated with the film. Even then it will be viewed more often than ‘The Brave,’ in which Depp made his directorial debut and which has been forgotten after its 1997 Antwerpen premiere. “Modi” performs significantly better than that vanity project, although it should be noted that this time Depp was more composed as he strayed away from directing the film, leaving Scamarcio’s role to be the most intriguing aspect of the film.
Denis L McIntyre wrote the play called Modi in 1979. It was in the past proposed that Modi be directed and acted by Al Pacino who is only now attached to the film in a brief cameo role as Maurice Gangnat. Pacino’s character was an art connoisseur who, along with many others from the art world’s history, failed to see Modigliani’s genius. In actuality, Maurice Gangnat was more of a good friend of the artist than the film suggests. Since the screenplay was written by two people, Kromolowski and Olson, who are husband and wife, they took the liberty of allowing the spirit of what they were trying to achieve to have an artistic license even if historical facts were not accurate. It tells the story of Modigliani’s Paris during World War I and spans over a three-day period.
In Modigliani’s case, this moment is still a few years ahead, nonetheless, his permanent hacking cough signals his end in a true melodrama. The artist is seen working on charming quick-sketch portraits of a mid-class escort for starving art patrons who frequent expensive coffee shops but his combative nature quickly leads to a. a verbal discussion with a client, which then evolves into a sound and blaster barney, inviting a police pursuit with rapid shift to black and white and cut into rapid silent film comedy. She is not Welcome with Closed Doors from Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat), the British leader writer associated with him sporadically as a lover he instead accompanies fellow rascal-hustlers Chaim Soutine (Ryan McParland) and Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gouery, a bit continuing his bohemian craziness in the dress of the period on TV ‘Emily in Paris’) to bars.
What follows is a light-loitering film of sorts, tracking a day in the life of the three characters as they all look for meaning, inspiration, and cheap alcohol on the seedy side of Paris while Modigliani every now and then calls on his jelly-headed art scattering friend Leopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham) to find out whether anybody wants to buy his pictures. Too much of this is framed as down-and-dirty slapstick, lurching into the deeper dramatic register as the gruesome backdrop of the war that has not abated is briefly brought into the picture, and our superhero is tortured by hallucinations of himself being killed at any time soon.
Remarkably, there is no single character in the piece that is perfect or immaculate and flawless in every impression the artist Modigliani played by Scamarcio is referred to as erratic, whilst there are elements of cruelty in Hastings’ character that are unambiguously expressed. This introduces a dimension to the relationship between the two already covered institutions that makes it much more complicated. The artist and the subject of the controversy possessing both, undeniable talent and emotion, illustrate their relationship throughout the film. There is a mutual need for each other and the narrations provoke the question What happened? Throughout the novel, she uses elocution at which she expresses emotion and chaos while always maintaining neutrality towards her recollections which creates a very caddy impression while being heavy and burdened by all the emotions of fame that Hastings draws in every recollection.
So the film loses movement and the “Modi” inches towards monotony by the finishing fifty percent as the story prepares for a possible climactic meeting of fate-making opportunities with Gangnat which most of the audience watching the movie knows that such a final battle is not going to take place. Depp’s film, beautifully shot and set in warm shades that evoke a Modigliani style, seems to be very much in love with its hero and perhaps more self-ironically concerned on behalf of all those artists who work in a system where not everything belongs to art. Auster is quick to receive this albeit courtesy of Modigliani, “Your power is in your pocket,” spitting at Gangnat, “Your taste is in your ass.” More than the usual show that is common with almost all famous-painter biopics. However, ‘Modi’ is more of a generic portrayal making it more of a biography of the painter than exuding creativity.
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