Capone's Art-House Round-Up with PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT, DIABLO, DRONE, THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, and WESTERN!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT
At one point in the new film about the famed art supporter and exhibitor Peggy Guggenheim, artist Marina Abramovic makes the point that patrons are far more important to artists than buyers or exhibitors, since patrons will support you even when you’re making unsalable art, which makes Guggenheim’s contribution to the 20th century art world all the more invaluable. From director Lisa Immordino Vreeland (DIANA VREELAND: THE EYE HAS TO TRAVEL) comes the indispensable PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT, a profile of the complicated, often mysterious black sheep of the Guggenheim family who gave many of the great modern artists of her time their first gallery shows in the various venues she ran in London, New York and ultimately the world family Venetian palazzo that remains one of the true destinations for art lovers the world over.

Based in part on her authorized biography as well as hours of recently discovered audio interviews with her official biographer Jacqueline B. Weld, ART ADDICT places Guggenheim in her proper place as one of the leading discoverers and preachers about modern art by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and Willem de Kooning, to name a few. She also organized an exhibition (likely the first in the world) of only female artists. The intricately researched and realized film offers up new and interesting stories about both the art world that Guggenheim inhabited (and was often at the center of) and her often tragic personal life, which included the death of her father when she was quite young.

Much like her autobiography, “Confessions Of an Art Addict,” the movie also dives into her love life and many affairs with artists and other cultural icons, including Samuel Beckett. Her take on sexual freedom is quite refreshing, humorous and candid, and it seems that nothing was off limits to her prying biographer. The archival footage and photographs are astonishing, and more recent interviews with art and cultural experts place Guggenheim’s influence in the proper context and place of esteem. One of my favorite smaller moments in the film involves Robert De Niro, whose parents were both artists whom Guggenheim displayed at times. If you were lucky enough to have seen the 2014 HBO documentary De Niro made about his father (Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro, Sr.), the intersection of that story and Guggenheim’s is quite extraordinary.

Director Vreeland also goes into a great deal of detail about particular artists Guggenheim took a liking to (most notably Pollock). The film not only acknowledges that she discovered and supported these artists but makes some attempt to explain what she liked (or didn’t like) in their work. To explore Guggenheim’s life is not just to see an important and powerful woman in the art world; Peggy Guggenheim, in many ways, is the history of 20th century art and what it means to be a true patron. ART ADDICT is a jaw-dropping trip through a bygone day when cultural and intellectual pursuits were one and the same, and to be a part of that circle was to be at the best party in the world.


DIABLO
It’s fascinating that both Kurt Russell and Walton Goggins, both stars in Quentin Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT also have other Western-type films available to watch right now. Russell can be seen in the extraordinarily violent and wonderful BONE TOMAHAWK (just released to home video), and now Goggins can be found as a particularly nasty instrument of death in DIABLO, the second film from director Lawrence Roeck (THE FORGER). Both DIABLO and THE HATEFUL EIGHT take place a few years after the Civil War, and both were shot in rather picturesque surroundings (DIABLO was shot in Alberta, Canada, standing in for the Colorado territory), and that’s about where the similarities end.

DIABLO is also a curiosity for admirers of the Westerns of Clint Eastwood, whose son Scott (THE LONGEST RIDE) stars here as Jackson, a Civil War veteran with a reputation for killing with impunity during the war, so much so that his enthusiasm for battlefield killing resulted in the accidental death of someone close to him. This event haunts him to such a degree that he has clearly become the victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. But just as eerie, when young Eastwood turns his head a certain way, has just the right amount of scruffy facial hair, grits his teeth just so, and speaks with a slightly raspy voice, the resemblance to his father is uncanny. There are times when you almost think you’re watching a lost Clint Eastwood film, which is both a tribute and totally unfair to Scott. But there you have it.

The film opens with Jackson’s world being blown apart once again. His home and barn are on fire, and his new bride, a Mexican woman named Alexsandra (Camilla Belle), has just been taken by other Mexicans (presumably her family, unhappy with the coupling). As they race off with her to the Mexican border, Jackson barely escapes the encounter with his life, but he immediately hops on his horse in hot pursuit. The film is about Jackson’s journey, his inability to cope with his time in the war, and his struggle to regain the one thing in his life he thinks makes him happy.

Since this is a film about a journey, DIABLO is populated with a cast of supporting characters who either assist our young hero or attempt to get in his way with mixed results. After being shot, a small group of Native Americans (led by the great Adam Beach) take him in to heal him An old wartime buddy (Danny Glover) also provides some degree of comfort; and then there’s Ezra (Goggins), a ruthless piece of work who does very little beyond garnering a great deal of pleasure out of watching people die, often at his hands. Something about Jackson’s particular brand of pain intrigues him, so he allows him to live only so he can watch him suffer, physically and mentally.

There are a few plot turns in DIABLO (for one, I thought maybe Ezra was meant to represent the devil; turns out, “Diablo” was Jackson’s nickname during the war) that aren’t exactly shocking, but propel the story in a direction that might surprise some. From a screenplay by Carlos De Los Rios, the movie functions best as a psychological study at a time when such considerations didn’t exist in the culture. Anchored by stunning cinematography by the legendary Dean Cundey (fans of early John Carpenter films will know his work), DIABLO is a great showcase for Scott Eastwood, who is still coming into his own but continues to improve as an actor and become more dynamic as a movie star.


DRONE
Although decidedly unbalanced on the subject of the U.S. policy and practice of drone warfare, the new documentary DRONE still provided a great deal of thought-provoking material from a great number of sources, some quite unlikely. While the film provides an adequate background on the origins of the use of drones for strategic and “precise” air strikes without putting a single American life at risk, it also gives us a view of several other sides of the issues, including a stark and haunting interview with former drone pilot Brandon Bryant, who is said to have more than 1,600 confirmed kills from his tiny bunker halfway around the world. The burden of such numbers and the full knowledge that not all of those kills were valued targets (many were children) was more than he could handle and now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Directed by Tonje Hessen Schei, DRONE also centers its camera at those in frequently bombed areas in and around Pakistan and asks serious question about the international legality of such warfare, especially since the presumption is that a person in that region must prove they are innocent rather than the United States proving they are guilty. There are also questions about whether individual drone pilots can be prosecuted for war crimes, given that they don’t have the same protections that the CIA (who gives them their targets) does.

Aside from a few bits of news conference footage of President Obama claiming that civilian casualties from drone strikes are minimal, there isn’t really a voice in this film explaining the benefits of drone warfare or addressing the abundant risks. The film digs into the way drone pilots are recruited (play up the video game look of the process to attract young pilots) and even features a rather amusing interview with the head of the company that invented the first modern drone used by the military (he invented the device to help tuna fisherman spot schools of fish and reduce their time at sea, which never caught on). Even he seems a bit put off by the way his invention is being used.

DRONE provides a slightly sickening look at how desensitized we as a nation have become to collateral damage, especially when the targets are in the Middle East, and one subject does an excellent job of explaining how this program essentially creates more terrorists than it kills, making this type of war self-perpetuating. Efforts are underway from other nations (addressing the United Nations) to stop this practice, but considering how shrouded in secrecy and a clouded sense of American entitlement the program is, their prospects seem slim for stopping it.


THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES
Rarely has the subject of income inequality been so interesting. For those paying any sort of attention to comedian Russell Brand of late (or perhaps having seen the fantastic documentary about him from last year, BRAND: A SECOND COMING), you might know that the performer has turned his attention to addressing the world’s problems through his web series “The Trews.” And one of the issues that sticks in his craw the deepest is the combination of income inequality and the way the banks of the world not only tanked the global economy but got away with it with no criminal prosecutions.

With THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES, Brand has teamed with the great British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, A MIGHT HEART, THE TRIP films, THE LOOK OF LOVE) to explore the roots of the hand-in-hand problems (hello, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan). Winterbottom illustrates concrete examples of how the issue is hurting individuals, and takes a stab at offering a few possible solutions. At times, the film feels like a colorful, informative economics lesson; other times, Brand straps on his activist’s cap and goes door to door to the various bank headquarters to speak with their CEOs about whether they think it’s fair that they received massive bonuses or pay hikes while their window washers and janitors live below the poverty line.

Brand and Winterbottom make every effort to strike a balance between taking the issues seriously while still keeping things light and instructive. While the bank visits feel like stunts for the cameras, Brand shines brightest when he’s talking one-on-one with folks from his old working-class neighborhood about their struggles to pay rent, buy food and still leave something for their children. There’s a genuine kindness in his rapport with both adults and children. He uses a group of 100 school children to explain income inequality and what exactly the 1% vs. 99% is all about to them.

If Brand’s lesson feel a bit like he’s dumbing things down for the masses, guess what? But by doing so, it makes a truly baffling situation somewhat clearer, or at least like something we can get our hands around rather than the overwhelming mess that so many feel it is. But because of how famous Brand is in the UK, he can get away with a bit more and not get arrested or considered a rambling lunatic. It’s a fascinating way of making a film that combines some of the more effective elements of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, while still putting a very human face on several troubling developments of the last 35 years.

Brand is certainly not going to appeal to everyone, but he’s used to that. I find him a seriously funny guy, attempting with THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES to break through the indecipherable and make sense of the senseless. The film treads the line between entertainment and activist movie making, and if you take away even a portion of what he and Winterbottom are putting forth, you’ll probably be a tad more informed than you were before and likely a great deal angrier and eager to respond.


WESTERN
When you first start watching the fantastic documentary WESTERN, you might believe for a fleeting moment that you’re watching science fiction. It’s the story of two border towns along the Rio Grande—Eagle Pass in Texas and Piedras Negras in Mexico. In so many ways, these towns need each other to survive and prosper as they have for decades, quite peacefully. Great appreciation festivals are thrown regularly, citizens stroll across an unguarded bridge to visit or do business. Cattle raised in Mexico are inspected by U.S. agents and brought over to Texas for eating. There is no wall, the leadership of both towns work closely together, and most of the citizens speak English and Spanish fluently as part of a relaxed bicultural world. So of course, someone is going to come and fuck it up.

From filmmaking brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross (TCHOUPITOULAS), Western tracks the remarkably rapid downfall of this perfect eco-system thanks to the rising threat of drug cartels moving toward Piedras Negras. Surprisingly, it’s the Texans who are quick to point out that the cartels wouldn’t feel the need to encroach on this town were it not for the demand on the American side. But as a result of some truly horrific violence so close to the border, U.S. government orders a wall put up and all stoppage of cattle coming across the bridge (primarily because the government doesn’t feel it’s safe for the inspectors to go over into Mexico to do their jobs).

If there is a “hero” in this film, it would probably be Chad Foster, the then-mayor of Eagle Pass, who was a staple on both sides of the border. He was a problem solver, a diplomat, a good old boy from way back who spoke perfect Spanish, and a promoter of good business relations on this little slice of Tex-Mex paradise. So of course he became an object of derision from both sides. He reads an angry email from a minuteman border patrol member, and he is nearly killed when bullets fly into a diner he’s in. He survives, but his spirit is damaged severely.

That would be a great metaphor for the region—it’s still there, people still exist in their respective nations, but their spirit is being crushed, and WESTERN shows exactly how. There’s a glimmer of hope in the form of a spirited cattleman and single father, struggling to make a living. Even so, it’s a heartbreaking story that every American ought to see.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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