The Christophers is a slithering, wily London art-world comedy-drama that explores the complex relationship between art, creativity, and parody, all while featuring the iconic Sir Ian McKellen's playful performance as the self-proclaimed enfant terrible Julian Sklar. The narrative delves into the world of fine art, where the line between the authentic and the fake, the respected and the ridiculed, is blurred. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the film predominantly unfolds within a confined space, with McKellen and Michaela Coel, as the down-to-earth Lori, engaging in a dynamic, head-spinning conversation. The theater of the mind, where the viewer is complicit in the unfolding of the intricate dialogue, creates a heightened sense of suspense. The narrative prompts the viewer to question the value of the self-proclaimed greats and the exploitation that can sometimes come from such arrogant overestimates. Simultaneously, it raises the question of whether or not regressive aesthetics—as seen in the portrayal of one of the characters in the narrative—can ever really encompass the essence of art.
The Christophers By Larushka Ivan-Zadeh Rating: Before he heads off for one final round of Gandalf in The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum, Sir Ian McKellen gives himself – and us – a truly wizard treat with The Christophers.
This sly, twisty London art-world comedy-drama finds the spry 86-year-old on superb form as Julian Sklar, a bad-boy British artist of the 1960s who hasn’t painted for decades. Instead, Julian spends his solitary days cashing in on his fleeting fame as the nasty, Simon Cowell-style judge of 1990s TV show Art Fight: popping on a cheesy beret and recording Cameo-style personalised video messages for his fans.
Meanwhile, Julian’s bungling, faintly ghastly children are eager to get their mitts on some cold, hard inheritance. They recruit an impoverished art restorer called Lori , supposedly to be their father’s new assistant. In fact, they’ve hired her to forge ‘The Christophers’, Julian’s legendary series of unfinished paintings, whose originals are hidden somewhere inside his dishevelled Bloomsbury townhouse.
Before he heads off for one final round of Gandalf in The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum, Sir Ian McKellen gives himself – and us – a truly wizard treat with The Christophers Prolific filmmaker Steven Soderbergh may be best known for Ocean’s Eleven, but his 37th feature is no heist caper. The Christophers mainly revolves around two people talking in a room – but what a thrilling twosome they are.
Lip-smacking over every morsel of dialogue, McKellen is deliciously wily and waspish as an egocentric old coot who hogs all the best lines.
‘Weinstein ruined the robe for the rest of us,’ he sighs, peacocking past Lori in a dressing gown with next to nothing underneath. Yet Coel’s Lori proves a worthy opponent. While Julian blusters, she brings an inscrutable, coolly watchful quality to bear. And it is Coel’s Sphinx-like screen presence that makes this battle of wills truly special.
Written by Ed Solomon , The Christophers can feel stagey at times, but there are enough playful rug-pulls to keep viewers engaged. It’s ideal for a film club to pick apart over a glass of wine because, like a fine painting itself, it reveals many layers.
By Matthew Bond Rating: Steven Soderbergh is a prolific film-maker but given that his past credits range from sex, lies and videotape to Erin Brokovich, Magic Mike to Ocean’s 11, it’s safe to say we’re never quite sure what we’re going to get next. That’s certainly true of The Christophers, where the American director not only takes a sceptical, almost jaundiced view of the world of fine art but also comes to London to do it.
Julian Sklar was once a giant of the British art scene, we are asked to believe. But while his real-life contemporaries, Freud, Bacon and Auerbach retained their creative renown right up until their deaths, the fictional Sklar’s popularity peaked in the 90s and then slumped. Now, with even a secondary career as acerbic celebrity critic on a TV art show behind him, he keeps himself in pocket money selling recorded messages to his dwindling army of fans.
Small wonder that his grasping children – the “heirs abhorrent” as he calls them - Barnaby and Sallie have their eyes on a famously uncompleted series of paintings that lie in their father’s loft. This is an artfully contrived, high-brow drama that often entertains but never quite grips If finished, The Christophers – portraits of a handsome young man - would be worth millions but Sklar won’t go near them – too painful.
But if he won’t finish them, maybe someone else, slightly illegally, could? Enter Lori Butler , who was at art school with the spectacularly untalented Sallie. These days, Lori restores more art than she actually paints herself and has a rare talent for mimicking the styles of others. She also seems to have history with Sklar which, when the pair finally meet, the mercurial painter seems to have forgotten about.
Or has he? It’s game on. What ensues, thanks to Ed Solomon’s screenplay, is astonishingly wordy and often seems more like a showcase for McKellan’s theatrical talents than a full-on feature film. It’s challengingly complicated too, with each of our central characters repeatedly gaining the upper hand only to lose it again.
And again. McKellan, never an actor shy of giving it plenty, is fabulously watchable while Coel dials her own performance down to pleasing if somewhat enigmatic effect. But with so little genuinely at stake and despite David Holmes’ lovely music, this is an artfully contrived, high-brow drama that often entertains but never quite grips.
Comedy-Drama Creativity Art Soderbergh Plot Mckellen Coel
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