Is ‘The Christophers’ Ian McKellen’s Career-Best Performance?
Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” showcases one of the best performances Sir Ian McKellen has ever given, which is enough reason to see it.
This one-of-a-kind comedy/drama is also unlike most other films about artists.
McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a reclusive but celebrated painter who infamously never finished a set of works titled The Christophers. Sklar’s rotten, money-hungry children (played by Jessica Gunning and former talk show host James Corden) hire Lori (Michaela Coel) to finish The Christophers herself and pass it off as Julian’s work.
When Julian meets Lori, he’s taken by her intelligence and skill, but has his own ideas about what to ultimately do with The Christophers.
Soderbergh’s wonderful new film isn’t just about art but, refreshingly, also the joy and agony that goes into the process of creation. Considering that most films about the art world are either museum heists or bios about self-destructive painters, the film’s exploration of the actual work of painting and the frustrations it elicits is downright novel.
Movies about painters or artists in general typically have a montage of the brushes engorged with paint, the artist madly working the canvas, in the same way movies about artists have scenes of actors furiously typing. It’s a cliché and doesn’t tap into the actual process, let alone how much fun it is to create.
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To give most filmmakers a break, staging the act of creating art as a cinematic event isn’t easy. Outside of the pottery montage from “Ghost” (1990), does any film, let alone a mainstream movie, reflect how an artist’s imagination, skill and obsession lead to a physical approximation of the idea?
I suppose the ultimate film that painstakingly demonstrates how art emerges from artists has to be “La Belle Noiseuse” (English title “The Beautiful Troublemaker”), in which a legendary artist paints a young Emmanuelle Béart nude in real time and we experience every paint stroke and literally watch paint dry.
Oh, and the film is four hours long.
For everyone else, there’s “The Christophers.” McKellen gives such a forceful performance, flush with lengthy, hilarious monologues, that he’s almost the whole show here. Coel brings dimension and intelligence to her role, and its refreshing to see Cordan play a character we’re supposed to loathe.
“The Christophers” plays like a companion piece to McKellen’s vehicles “Mr. Holmes” (2015) and especially “Gods and Monsters” (1998), the latter of which is still McKellen’s best movie and performance. In both that film and “The Christophers,” he plays an elderly artist who challenges and inspires a young protégée.
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The music and cinematography are crisp, and Soderbergh allows the extensive two-person scenes to go long but the edits never allow it to drag or feel claustrophobic.
The final scene brought a tear to my eye, as screenwriter Ed Solomon arrives at a perfect conclusion. Film buffs will remember Solomon, not only as the author of Soderbergh’s prior “No Sudden Move” (2021) but, no joke, as the writer behind every single “Bill and Ted” movie (!).
There are so many McKellen hall of fame performances, such as “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001), “X-Men” (2000), “Richard III” (1995) and “Apt Pupil” (1998). This one is among his richest and most complex.
“The Christophers” could have been a filmed play and, at times, feels like one. This is among its boldest achievements, as it manages to keep us engaged in what is mostly a movie about two people in a house trying to figure one another out.
Considering the achievement of Richard Linklater’s three-person 2001 drama, “Tape,” it’s almost as if Soderbergh was attempting to audaciously make the two-person variant. What could have come across as a potential stunt or something that should have stayed on stage instead emerges as a thought-provoking comedy on the notion of authorship, both in art and life.
Three and a half stars (out of four)
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