3 New Films Probe Ageing Male Artists' Ego as Creative Decline Looms
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 11
3 New Films Probe Ageing Male Artists' Ego as Creative Decline Looms
2 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 11
Summary
Three new films — Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, Kent Jones’s Late Fame and Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers — depict ageing male artists using vanity and spite to fend off fears of fading talent.
Bitter Christmas centers on filmmaker Raúl, played by Leonardo Sbaraglia, whose self-regard and willingness to mine friends’ pain for material expose ego as a shield against career stagnation.
Late Fame and The Christophers extend that pattern through a rediscovered 1979 poet who cannot write anew and a celebrated painter who sabotages access to his unfinished work after losing his muse.
Decades after films like Sunset Boulevard and 8½, this newer cycle turns the egotistical artist into a sadder figure, linking masculine pride, mortality and creative paralysis in a youth-obsessed culture.