Gilroy worked with several outside consultants to get the "art speak" in his script down pat. But anyone expecting Velvet Buzzsaw to be a searing satirical indictment of the 21st century fine art enterprise is bound to be disappointed. The deliberate ambiguity works, in my opinion sometimes it's better to leave details to the viewer's imagination. He might well have been the first victim. For instance, is it the ghost of Dease inhabiting his art and taking revenge, or has his art taken on a life of its own? Dease was trying to destroy the paintings when he suddenly (and mysteriously) died, after all. But Gilroy is happy to keep the specifics vague. There are hints that Dease had a dark, twisted history, and that he used some unconventional materials in his paintings (described as "personal effects" by the conservationist who catalogues the collection). The camerawork accentuates this there are several shots where we view the characters from the perspective of the artwork they're viewing, calling to mind Friedrich Nietzsche's dictum in Beyond Good and Evil: "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." The paintings seem to have a kind of sentience, "watching" those who are observing them perhaps it is the act of being seen that gives them that power (and why Dease wanted them all destroyed). "If you look at it long enough, it moves," up-and-coming street artist Damrish (Daveed Diggs, Blindspotting) tells Josephina at one point, unable to tear his gaze away. Advertisementĭease's paintings cast an irresistible spell on whoever views them. When the people who benefited from the buying and selling of Dease's work begin disappearing and/or dying under mysterious circumstances, Morf (who's been having disturbingly vivid visual and aural hallucinations) is convinced something is terribly wrong. Josephina and Rhodora strike a bargain to market Dease's paintings to collectors eager for a fresh addition to the " outsider art" category.
When she learns he has no surviving family, she steals the stash, even though Dease had left explicit instructions that all his art was to be destroyed upon his death. "We don't sell durable goods, we peddle perception," she tartly observes. Rhodora's assistant, Josephina (Zawe Ashton, Nocturnal Animals), finds her reclusive elderly neighbor dead in the hallway, and discovers the man-one Vetril Dease-was a gifted artist, with an apartment filled with canvases.
His tastes are highly simpatico with those of ruthlessly pragmatic gallery owner Rhodora Haze (Russo). Gyllenhaal plays Morf Vandewalt, a snooty, sexually fluid art critic-"Critique is so limiting and emotionally draining"-whose reviews can make or break a career. The triumvirate is back in top eccentric form with Velvet Buzzsaw, this time targeting the indulgent narcissism and greed of the Los Angeles contemporary art scene. Rene Russo (Frigga in Thor) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Mysterio in the forthcoming Spiderman: Far From Home) co-starred in writer/director Dan Gilroy's 2014 thriller, Nightcrawler, a dark, disturbing tale that skewered the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality of broadcast news.
An obscure artist dies and leaves behind a trove of strangely alluring paintings, becoming a posthumous success, in the Netflix original film Velvet Buzzsaw. It turns out to be literally art to die for.