In the history of cinema, some films get a drubbing…and some films receive reviews so bad that they become “must-sees”. Film star-cum-artist Johnny Depp’s latest directorial effort about the wild boy of 20th-century art, Amedeo Modigliani, may well join this canon.
Based on a play by Dennis McIntyre, Modigliani – Three Days on the Wing of Madness captures 72 hours in the hell-raising life of the artist played by the Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio. The movie has so far received scathing reviews from critics.
Writing in The Times, Kevin Maher says: “Nothing happens in this film. There is no narrative progress. When describing the need for forward momentum in movies, the script guru Robert McKee famously stated that ‘if the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep shit’. Every single scene here is about what the scene is about, creating the deepest vat of cinematic shit imaginable.” Ouch.
The arts writer Nancy Durrant concluded that “the script is truly atrocious—stilted, endlessly explicatory, and it should be illegal to have someone in Paris recite a few lines of poetry in the bath and then have their lover sagely say ‘Baudelaire’.”
The movie, which also includes starry cameos from Al Pacino and Stephen Graham, has some redeeming features though, say certain commentators. Mansel Stimpson comments in Film Review: “I do find it a very uneven work but, in addition to the other good things in it, the last scene of all is very satisfying being admirably judged and perfectly timed.”
Is this arty flick truly that bad? Art lovers will need to head to the cinema to find out.
