Themes: Life in the Arts, Tortured Genius, Bohemian Life
Main Cast: Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig, Tilda Swinton, Anne Lambton, Adrian Scarborough
Release Year: 1998
Country: UK
Run Time: 91 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
This British biographical drama probes the life of painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992), critically acclaimed as the outstanding British painter of the latter half of the 20th Century. This unsympathetic portrait of Bacon (Derek Jacobi) begins when George Dyer (Daniel Craig), a small-time criminal from working-class East End environs, drops through a skylight to rob Bacon's studio -- and is ordered into bed by Bacon. The two become a familiar couple at Bacon's hangout, the Colony Room in Soho. Bacon's sexual interests lean toward S&M, but as the cruel Bacon loses interest in Dyer and begins to look elsewhere, the couple splits. Left to his own devices, Dyer turns to drugs and alcohol -- and a tragic suicide. Visual grotesqueries and a trancelike Ryuichi Sakamoto music score capture the essence of Bacon's work (although paintings by Bacon are not seen onscreen here). The film is told in the form of a flashback from Bacon's successful 1971 retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris to a period in the mid-'60s. Bacon biographer Daniel Farson (The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon) served as consultant on the film. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
Review
The life of Francis Bacon may have been too vast, turbulent, and dark to be made into a film, but this sketch of a brief period of his life encounters its own problems. The film's limitations are two-fold: there are no finished Bacon paintings on view (presumably, rights were too expensive or difficult to obtain), and Bacon is not going to come off well, given the outcome of this episode, an affair with burglar George Dyer. What director John Maybury and his colleagues try to accomplish is a quick submersion in Bacon's world, alternating between scenes of him in a frenzy, painting in his studio, and of nights at his favorite bar, the Colony Room, where the great man held court with a gallery of grotesques right out of a Fellini film. As a couple, Bacon and Dyer are reminiscent of playwright Joe Orton and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell (as portrayed by Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina, in Prick Up Your Ears), with the artist heaping abuse on his slow-witted lover until said lover snaps. But Orton's own torment over hiding his sexual preference made him a figure of some sympathy; here, Derek Jacobi's Bacon is so sadistic, that, in the absence of any screen evidence of his powerful art, we are forced to presume his greatness and forgive (or allow) him sins of neglect and abuse. Ultimately, this is a sketch that only works as such. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
A biography of Irish painter Francis Bacon (Jacobi), it concentrates on his strained relationship with George Dyer (Craig), a small time thief. The film draws heavily on the authorised biography of Bacon, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson, and is dedicated to him.
