F For Fake
pretty cool that orson welles adapted one of my favourite
black metal dramas 30 years before it happened.
welles the person has always been a source of fascination to me and i've gobbled up many of his interviews over the years (the
cavett interviews are fantastic as cavett interviews always are), and this does feel like a typical late film in that it seems to summarise who he was, the layers and the showmanship and the obsessions he carried with him. given his love of shakespeare, i think the best entry point for the film is to view it as his
hamlet, which is to say it understands art as mankind's eternal response to and deflection from mortality and so it deconstructs that response, revealing it for the sham it is while also trying to find something vital or life-affirming in the process itself. the central theme guiding much of his career is the way time erodes everything, and the question of how one can immortalise oneself if it's even possible, and by the time the cathedral sequence is done it actually surprisingly seems like one of his more naked attempts to explore that question. i don't know that he arrives at any kind of concrete answers, but i kind of like that it has the really serious scene about an hour in and then welles just enjoys spinning his own fakery for the final act (re hamlet: "the play's the thing").
ultimately it's more interesting for how it illuminates welles and my favourite welles movies than it is enjoyable to watch in itself, for me anyway. the story itself (or the version of it we get) is pretty crazy and it barrels along at a brisk pace with a lot of fun details so it's never boring, but i don't find all the winking commentary very amusing and it's also probably a victim of its own age and influence--these kinds of pomo metamusings are pretty passé these days. beyond what i've said above, i think it's basically his attempt to mischievously play the audience in a similar way to hitchcock (i don't like it when hitch is more overt about that either), except instead of looking down on them like cattle it actually lets them in on the joke, which is probably an upgrade.
all in all, probably a 3.5/5 for me on this watch (i had seen it once but probably 15+ years ago so barely remembered anything), possibly slightly generous in all honesty but i'm always inclined to be generous toward welles. for those who only know him through this and/or
citizen kane, i'd urge you to watch my personal favourite of his
touch of evil, an all-time top 5 noir in my book.
