In the lyrical and enchanting “old reputation” of Kent Jones, Willem Dafoe plays a forgotten New York poet who had a moment. It was in 1979, and the character of Dafoe, Ed Saxberger, was part of the city center scene – the exhibitionist misfits of punks and artists and Warhol / Waters who lived almost in the East Village and its sordid surroundings, dragged and went to loft celebrations, but sometimes they created things. Ed published a poetry book, entitled “Way Past Go”, which placed it at the edge of what was going on. For a while, he experienced the bohemian dream. But the 1980s were at the corner of the street and poetry did not pay rent. So Ed, when we meet him today, is no longer a poet. He is a man who has been working in the post office for 37 years (as Charles Bukowski did in the 1950s and 60s), and he now lives a new anonymity. Every night, he hangs out in the same bar in the neighborhood with his working class friends who have no idea that he has ever been a writer.
Very early on, while he headed for his building at the apartment in Manhattan, Ed was arrested by a young man who looks at him on the other side of the street. Comrade Coupé and Preppie presents himself as Meyers (Edmund Donovan) and explains that he read “Way Past Go”, and he thinks he is a masterpiece. For him, Ed is not a ghost of a poet that no one remembers; It was the god of a writer who composed something timeless. And as Meyers explains, he is not the only one to feel this. He has a group of friends who meet regularly to talk about art and life and everything else, and they have all read ” he. They want to meet him.
Dafoe plays this meeting with a sneaky crest influence. Our instinct is to imagine that Ed would be flattered and touched knowing that someone remembers (and loves) his book. But Dafoe, with haunted eyes and a slow smile, shows you that Ed can barely take it. It is not only that his days of poetry are decades behind him; is that he is not that person more. But under a certain distrust of the American environment, he is an affable guy, and Meyers continues to cajolate him. So, after a while, Ed agrees to introduce this tavern to meet his fans to zoom last days.
One of the common observations on filmmakers like Jean Renoir, Robert Altman and Jonathan Demme is that they see everyone’s humanity on the screen. It is abundantly true for Kent Jones, who made his first dramatic characteristic, the heartbreaking “Diane”, in 2018; He featured Mary Kay Place, in a revealing performance, while an aging boomer merchanting a past that was so alive that you could almost touch him. Looking at “late reputation”, I felt the same bit of sweet -amer’s humanity – except that what is special about the voice of Jones came even higher for me this time. He has a very naturalistic style, but particularly greedy. His camera follows the actors, according to movements and thoughts, often coming to them. Which stimulates this camera, in a word, curiosity.
Kent Jones is a filmmaker who is deeply and dramatically curious, and it is a quality that he shares with the screenwriter of the film, Samy Burch, who wrote “May-Decene”. In “Late Fame”, Jones fills the screen of the people he wants to know more. The film, like “Diane”, has a fascinating central character, and once again, we see this character taking place against a community that supports a degree, but not without its insidious illusions. Ed, in “renowned late”, goes on a trip – in his past, but really in the question of whether he was and what he was still in the present.
When he presents himself for the first time to meet Meyers and his friends, they seem to have a lot in common. But Ed presents itself with a courteous reluctance without frills which is equally polite and prudence. He wonders the same thing as us: who are these people – this new generation of seated and drinking poetry lovers in the East Village? In the tavern, where they occupy the large open space upstairs (on the other side of the room from a table of “influencers” which they consider to be their sworn enemy), they declare and debate their passions and their values. They are mainly recent university graduates, NYU and other elite paradise. They love art, real art. They don’t like technology or social media. They refer to each other by their family name, an assignment intended to evoke the tenacity of the 1920s. And as a group, they are called the Enthusiasm Société – an idiotic name, for of course, but stupidity is one of them, a reprimand to hip cynicism that carries the people of passion.
“Late Fame”, which reconfigures a novel posthumously published by Arthur Schnitzler (which wrote the novel of 1926 “Dream Story”, on which “Eyes Wide Shut” was based), takes the form of a sprawling duo between Ed and its new enlightened cult of disciples and fans. What is captivating in the film is how he uses this interface to tell a bigger story: bohemian world then and now, and what it really meant and always means (or perhaps not), and what it reflects where we are all. But it is also the quietly haunting and very specific portrait of a man, Dafoe’s Ed: Halting, impatient, resilient, defeated in many ways, but always a figure of buried desire, and perhaps someone who wakes up a part of himself, he should never have been to fall asleep.
What is the society of enthusiasm about? From the start, the character of Meyers intrigues us. Edmund Donovan makes him formal and precise, and he explains why he appreciates formality (all is the art of language, that the rest of culture leaves us away); It seems quite sincere. But then ED visits Meyers’ apartment. As soon as he enters the sprawling and impeccably furnished stamp, we see the real story of Meyers and his friends: that they are rich children living on the penny of dad – and, in a way, playing Bohemian on the penny of dad. (They say they hate technology, but Meyers is in very friendly terms with Siri.) Does this invalidate their orientation? Not necessarily. Meyers, for his part, really seems to worry about literature. That said, the world of privilege is a different thing from the world not only of loving art but alive for that. While the “late renown” continues, and they decide to put a reading of poetry from the city center which will star in the public return of Ed Saxberger (with other pieces of performance launched), the film meditates on the fact that it is an evolution of the art of the middle class or a fatal contradiction.
Dafoe’s performance is like a wild flower that takes place slowly. His Ed begins like a ravaged monument, but this face gradually undresses while it develops with its new notoriety, which prevents itself, even if it is aware of its integrated evanescence. Dafoe’s game becomes the most optimistic and vulnerable, when Ed makes the difference in the interest of Gloria, the only woman in the group, and perhaps the only real bohemian. She is older than the others, and Greta Lee, of “Past Lives”, cheek like a fatal postmodern vamp from the 80s, a cross between Louise Brooks and Lydia Lunch. It is both a professional flirt; A fabulous girl it; an odious poster; And, as we see in a single scene where she drops the mask, an old -fashioned old -fashioned ingenious ingenious who will tighten with someone for rent. But she is also a real artist. When reading poetry, she goes up on stage and performed “Surabaya Johnny” by Brecht / Weill with a primitive cabaret power which transforms the song into a four -minute autobiography. She is fascinating.
And the same goes for him to finally get up on stage to read a poem of “Way Past Go”. He had agreed to write a new poem for the occasion, but was unable to come together to do so; The real poetry, we bring together, is not written on demand. But in this way, we hear that the poet Ed was at his peak, and there is a double disarming vision on this subject. We hear how modern It seems (and by modern, I mean: how trapped in its time), references from the world lost in New York with a male look insisting against the three dimensionality of the language. And yet … it’s a thing of beauty! He comes across our ears like music, and we realize that Ed really had the gift.
But is that what his new followers, like Meyers and the ersatz-prolotaire brussard (clay singer), covet him? Or do they want it because it is a marching signifier of artistic intrepidity that they can transform into an accessory? At the end of the “late renown”, Ed crossed the glass of rediscovery only to resume. After 37 years at the post office, he tasted life on the other side. But what he wants is what is real, and it is something that Bohemia may have no room.
