THE AMATEUR (plus Siena at the National Gallery, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and my favourite sexual positions)

With a ticket booked to see a Saturday afternoon screening of Rami Malek in THE AMATEUR, I spent my morning at the National Gallery communing with the work of some true creative professionals: Simone Martini, the irascible Lorenzetti brothers, Pietro and Ambrosio, and tax-dodger, lothario, baby daddy to many and all-round “my type”, Duccio de Buoninsegna.  Early 14th Century Siena was very much the place to be if you, like dastardly Duccio, were a fast-living pioneer of the arts and believed there was no such thing as too much gold leaf (gold leaf is to Duccio and medieval Siena as teeny-tiny edible flowers are to Meghan and modern day Montecito, so far as I can tell: it’s strewn over literally anything and everything…).

There are a few moments in the history of art where big changes were afoot and we can trace the direct influence of one painterly scholar (or scholarly painter?) through the centuries to those working today, and one such moment is captured by the Siena exhibition.  Particularly, these artists were experimenting with perspective and endeavouring to evolve their subjects from established Christian iconography (annunciation, nativity, crucifixion, resurrection… over and over and over again…) into depictions of landscapes (which are echoed by the surrealists, particularly Leonora Carrington, I think), and more complicated narratives, including subjects engaging with one another and expressing emotion with their much more realistic, fleshy faces.

The majority of existing panels of Duccio’s polyptych Maesta have been brought together to create a truly breathtaking narrative experience.  Given his proclivities for running up debts and impregnating ladies of the night, I guess it is no surprise that the theme of “Temptation” runs pretty heavily through Duccio’s work: Temptation on the Mount, Temptation at the Temple, Temptation on the Mountain….  In each depiction, Christ is fleshy, corpulent and draped in red and blue gowns, while the devil is a shadow, an absence, bereft any depth or colour or light, without so much as a hint of the otherwise ubiquitous gold leaf.  In Duccio’s mind, the devil is merely the absence of the virtues extolled by Christ, a powerful visual representation of the privation of evil (and a timely reminder, in our current hair-raising political climate, that evil only exists in the absence of good).

These polyptychs (the Maesta and also Simone Martini’s Orsini altar, not to be confused with the more limited triptychs or diptychs, nor, for that matter, with Diptyque, the fancy French perfumerie which has made a mockery of me by first selling me a ridunculousy expensive bottle of hand-soap, then making it entirely impossible for me to figure out how to get the soap out of the pump-thing, if anyone can help?!) tell us a story and, in so doing, they are not unlike a very, very good comic book or graphic novel (but only if (i) it was still all about Christ and (ii) it was absolutely dripping in gold leaf…) or, indeed, storyboards.  If he were alive in the 20th or 21st centuries, I imagine Duccio would have been l’enfant terrible of independent cinema, right?  Yes, it would be an immense pain in the arse to make a film with him, but it’d all work out rather beautifully in the end and we’d be forgiving in the name of ‘art’ (and status… and awards… and money…). 

And I wanted to be forgiving of THE AMATEUR in the name of ‘art’, too.  I really, really did, not least as it is made by some very admirable professionals including Academy Award winner Rami Malek, all-the-telly-type-awards winner Rachel “Mrs Maisel” Brosnahan and director James “Slow Horses” (and ALL British high-end TV, pretty much) Hawes.

One of the very first things to happen in THE AMATEUR is Rachel Brosnahan talking about her imminent travel to London, saying, “Six nights - five nights there, then the overnight back.”  But it is impossible to take an overnight flight back from London to the East Coast (or anywhere in the US): it is five hours behind us, so the overnight bit happens on the way to London (although I prefer the daytime flight from NY these days, a sign of advancing years, methinks), not on the way back.  And this may seem like a trifling and trivial thing to allow into my head (particularly as I may well have entirely misheard it or misunderstood what was going on…), but I can be a trifling and trivial person, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how the script error was somewhat… amateur.

Malek’s Charlie Heller (who I could swear was the lead singer in Busted?… or McFly?… or some other early 2000s boyband that was not One Direction?) is a codebreaker at the CIA and is forced to take the law into his own hands when his wife is killed and nobody seems even vaguely interested in finding out what happened to her.  I confess I know nothing about codebreaking or the CIA or investigating international terrorism or anything, really, but he didn’t seem to be a total amateur, imo, and he had easy, immediate access to all of her data and info and everybody else’s, too (amateur: no; creepy and red-flag-raising: yes).

I really, really tried to stick with THE AMATEUR and great supporting cast (little seen and much missed Laurence “The Fish” Fishburne, and I call him that because I’ve heard that’s how he refers to himself… as “The Fish”… in the third person…, Jon Bernthal and always excellent Julianne Nicholson), but I buckled when Catriona Balfe entered the fray as a Russian secret service type gal, and I proved myself to be a complete amateur when it comes to film criticism, leaving the cinema half-way through and therefore unable, in good conscience, to have any real opinion about this film, other than to say… don’t call a film THE AMATEUR, ffs!  You are making it all too easy for snarky fuckers like me and you are underestimating the power of nominative determinism (and as someone who once set up a disastrous company called Fiasco, I should know!).

So, while my review of THE AMATEUR is compromised by my egregious lack of professionalism, I can offer you a bonus, bona-fide, as-professional-as-they-come review of Jonathan Demme’s spectacular Oscar-collecting movie THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, currently on re-release at Everyman Cinemas, and, incidentally, a film about an amateur (Clarice Starling is a student at Quantico) who out-shines and outwits all of the patronising mansplainers around her to find Buffalo Bill all by herself.  Is there a better film?  I know Betty Friedan refused to see it on the basis of the misogynistic horrors of depicting mutilated young women and she was a professional feminist, but I am only an amateur feminist and I think it is brilliant.  Jodie Foster’s performance is phenomenal and inspiring and she is surely, on screen and off, the consummate professional (unlike the six women launched into space in Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket yesterday, Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez among them… fucking amateurs).

So, for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[And I have nothing whatsoever to share about sexual positions, but I noticed posts with the words “Sex” and/or “Boobs” in the title get three times as many views, so….  Check me out: learning on the job!  Relax… I’m a professional… 🏎️]