Velvet Buzzsaw, let just take in the title for a bit. Velvet, a smooth and soft clothing material made with silk, cotton, or nylon. And buzzsaw a metallic circular blade made to cut. The two words make for an interesting contrast of a title.
You might say, “isn’t the title irrelevant for the overall quality of the movie?” and to that, I say yes, but I still like the title.
Summarizing Velvet Buzzsaw is easy enough. You have a cast of characters all working in the art world. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Morf Vandewalle, an extremely pretentious art critic, whose review can make or break an artist’s career. Rene Russo plays Rhodora Haze, the head of the gallery all the characters are associated with. She is more or less the boss, the alpha, the godfather (mother?) of this whole operation. She has an assistant named Josephina (Zawe Ashton). one day Josephina finds some paintings from a deceased person who lives in her apartment complex. Well, it turns out the paintings are evil and now everyone who is associated with the paintings is being killed off in mysterious ways.
Wait, is this an arthouse film about art?
The Film is a little light on plot if you will, the film is about a large cast of characters who are all working in the art world, and are all assholes except for one. The movie explores how the cast interacts and it explores interesting power dynamics throughout the film.
Josephina finds and steals the art from her deceased neighbor, when she enters his apartment for the first time she is originally drawn in by a cat. Cats are of course connected to the supernatural with their association with witchcraft.
The theme of power dynamics is explored beautifully by Josephina. She starts the film as a small fry, a little fish in a big pond. She is introduced when she receives a call that her boyfriend is cheating on her. This understandably makes her upset and she enters her job crying. No one is actually taking notice or bothering. Morf is the only person who asks her if she is okay. However, he cuts her off before she gets a chance to speak, with his own not so important question.
Later on, Josephina and Morf enter a relationship with each other. However, Morf is starting to realize something supernatural is taking place and that the art itself is evil. When this happens he starts to slowly lose his mind, as you would if evil art is out to get you.
Does the idea of evil art sound stupid yet? It kind of works in the movie however, when I type it out it looks strange and stupid. Like, UUHHHH beware of the evil art, ANYWAYS.
Morf loses his marbles and Josephina essentially breaks up with him. Saying she fell for his intelligence and passion and now he just looks like a loser. If it wasn’t already clear the characters in the film are kind of douchebags. They more or less have to be in order for the film to kill them off one by one in more and more gruesome ways. There is only one character that is nice and low and beholds she doesn’t die isn’t that just great.
Josephina fails to inform Morf that they broke up, later he gets a call telling him that she is cheating on him, this makes the movie come full circle in a strange way. Josephina starts the film being weak and inferior to everyone else. But, by discovering the evil art she becomes powerful in the art world, this power corrupts her.
The characters in the movie don’t really care for each other, they are only interested in using each other. Also, every single character just takes off their classes all the time! There is not a scene where the glasses stay on, they just take them off all the time. You might think this is trivial, and yes kind of, but it still bothers me. If you notice something so stupid then there is something wrong.
Rhodora also has a tattoo saying “No death, no art” which serves as a really bad way of foreshadowing what is to come later in the movie.
The movie is also kind of a parody of itself. Morf is talking like the most pretentious art critique ever, so much so that it actually becomes tiring with time. I have no idea if people at art galleries really talk like that, but if they do I will stay clear.
Did you like it?
I did, somewhat, it was a little better than I expected, however, I did expect the worst so take that for what you will. The biggest thing against the film and why I ultimately can’t really recommend it for many people is that it feels like a light version of an arthouse film. It is supposed to be this intellectual piece, like a David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, or Ingmar Bergman film. It feels like a pale imitation of a pale imitation of a real arthouse film.
It has to go darker and more strange to really work. every time it kills a character it cuts away or does not show the horrors. It needed to be more upfront, more provocative, more thought-provoking, it needed to be more of everything.
The movie is super hard to really recommend since it does not satisfy the fancy arthouse fans (like myself) or anyone else for that matter. It is not scary enough to satisfy horror fans.
It’s not a terrible movie, it just does not leave a big impact at all. This is a movie that will be forgotten in no time. Overall I thought it was fine at best, it does have some good things going for it, but time has passed since I saw the movie and the impact has degraded over time.