When we first meet Ian McKellen’s Julian Sklar, he’s lit by a ring light as he films cameos in front of an iPhone, .“sign” each one by holding an imaginary pen and drawing a signature in the air.” Julian, who was Britain’s most respected artist, is long past his glory days. .“cancel culture”, and has become bitter and mad, living alone in a large London townhouse: a decrepit space covered with framed pieces and exhibition posters from long ago, but painful and yearning for life with the energy of discarded art objects and unfinished canvases that make up the bulk of the clutter. And of course, he eats it.
We meet Julian through the watchful eye of Lori Butler (an equally formidable Michaela Coel) a struggling young artist who has given up on exhibiting her work and wants to participate in the art world, instead turning to art restoration – and at times, forgery – while working in a food truck for a living. Lori is secretly hired by Julian’s children, Sallie (Jessica Gunning) and Barnaby (James Corden), to work for their estranged father. .“assistant”, with a big plan that he made a series of lucrative, unfinished paintings (called Christophers) to sell after his father’s death.
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It’s a great showcase of McKellen and Coel’s talents. The contrast between them is rich and layered, down to the details of costume designer Eleanor Baker’s choice of knits and corals in warm and cool tones. Where Julian is a flamboyant, belligerent, dissident who talks about canceling culture or the futility of art education, Lori is friendly and quiet, self-confident about setting boundaries; like a cypher as he looks at his former idol with a mixture of pity, intrigue and compassion. Ed Solomon’s simple but clever screenplay and even the sets The Christophers apart from Soderbergh’s latest genre exercise, which, by comparison, feels more reserved and lacking in personality. If anything brings the film down, it’s Gunning and Corden’s wonderfully evil brothers, whose scenes make this feel like a completely different and over-the-top story.
In his mind, The Christophers explains a lot about the space between paintings and self-expression; for what you do .““good” art; about how artists can encourage each other to explore the depths of honesty and freedom in their work; about the fear of an artist losing track of what drives them to create. All of this, then, makes it very difficult to understand where Soderbergh is coming from when he confidently states that he will be using. .“a lot of The AI“ in his next film. The irony is not lost on anyone. Here, he has made a film that can be read as introspective, and stands as a powerful counterpoint to that statement. That his submission fed the hungry of The AI he left her .‘renewed’ or .‘insult’ remains to be seen.
