![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
F for Fake
Jun. 19th, 2010 02:10 amFirst post in over a month, and of all things it's a movie review?
Yeah, well it's not a typical movie. F for Fake is a documentary about forgery, by Orson Welles. Except it's not really a documentary. It's a figure-it-out-as-you-go-along mystery of interlocking forgers -- an artist who finds he can either starve painting his own works or prosper painting others', biographed (why isn't that a word?) by an author who immediately afterwards writes another book that turns out to be a cause celebre forgery -- an as-told-to "autobiography" of recluse Howard Hughes -- which casts his forger-profile into such doubt that now the forger's crimes are no longer believed, and an even greater forger who creates an entire new period for a famous, living, painter. It's told in interlocking flashforward/flashback, in a way I thought was a generation newer than its 1974 date, with a lot of philosophical musings thrown in, about subjects like how 'experts' have changed the nature of art.
It's not without its bumps and low points, but overall I was engrossed and entertained. I just returned it to Netflix (who for all I know have only one copy; it's hardly a chartbusting film), so now you can sign it out!
Yeah, well it's not a typical movie. F for Fake is a documentary about forgery, by Orson Welles. Except it's not really a documentary. It's a figure-it-out-as-you-go-along mystery of interlocking forgers -- an artist who finds he can either starve painting his own works or prosper painting others', biographed (why isn't that a word?) by an author who immediately afterwards writes another book that turns out to be a cause celebre forgery -- an as-told-to "autobiography" of recluse Howard Hughes -- which casts his forger-profile into such doubt that now the forger's crimes are no longer believed, and an even greater forger who creates an entire new period for a famous, living, painter. It's told in interlocking flashforward/flashback, in a way I thought was a generation newer than its 1974 date, with a lot of philosophical musings thrown in, about subjects like how 'experts' have changed the nature of art.
It's not without its bumps and low points, but overall I was engrossed and entertained. I just returned it to Netflix (who for all I know have only one copy; it's hardly a chartbusting film), so now you can sign it out!
