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Actor Joaquin Phoenix takes the microphone to reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician in Casey Affleck’s “I’m Still Here.” |
If Casey Affleck’s new movie “I’m Still Here” had been a genuine exploration of Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix’s wacked-out journey to become a white hip-hop star, it would have been a shocking, revelatory glimpse into the painful limits that a real artist will go to find personal fulfillment.
But “I’m Still Here” is a wax job, a fake, a put-on, a sham.
Some scenes appear to be real documentary footage cut in with the hocus-pocus. But for the most part, signs of directed fiction are all over this project.
First, nobody objects to having Affleck’s camera around 24/7 recording every intimate detail of their lives.
Nobody demands the camera be shut-off or refuses to talk (although Sean Combs at least asks Phoenix why he brought a camera crew to his apartment late at night before he lets them in).
Whole scenes scream “set up.”
In the most obvious one, Affleck’s night-vision camera captures — in a happy accident of good timing? — a disgruntled “assistant” named Anton pulling down his pants to defecate on Phoenix while he sleeps in his bed.
Phoenix’s assistants (well-endowed males with apparently no qualms about full-frontal shots) don’t get last names. A Newsweek “journalist” gets no name at all. (Read more…)