Anton Corbin knows cool. He can even create it, and has done so time and again in his pictures of musicians and rock stars — he is the photographer of whom Bono reportedly said, "I wish I were as cool as Anton’s photos make me look" (from your lips to God’s ears, Bono). So, who better than Corbijn to investigate the myth-making potential of photography and to bring us the story behind one of the most iconically cool photos of the 20th Century? But proving that sometimes we lose sight of the things that are closest to us, Corbijn’s "Life," which details the relationship between Life Magazine photographer, Dennis Stock, and definingly cool movie star, James Dean (which yielded the most famous photo of Dean, just months before his early death), is a weightless thing, skittering across the surface of the legend and only briefly ever daring to take a peek beneath. It looks pretty, and is visually often a creditable recreation of times past, but it gives no substance to Stock and Dean’s relationship, just circumstances. "Life" lacks life.
READ MORE: New International Trailer For ‘Life’ Starring Robert Pattinson And Dane DeHaan
The problem may be that those circumstances, as set out in Luke Davies‘ undoubtedly well-researched, but flat, screenplay, just aren’t that interesting. Stock (Robert Pattinson) is a struggling photographer who has left his ex and his young son in New York to pursue a career in LA, but who’s been stuck doing grunt work, such as on-set photos, rather than juicier assignments he hopes to get from his manager (Joel Edgerton). He meets Dean (Dane DeHaan) at a party given by Nicolas Ray (the film is set just after Dean auditioned for "Rebel Without a Cause," but at the outset he still has not heard if he has the part) and Dean more or less picks him up and brings him home. But there, actress Pier Angeli (Allessandra Mastronardi) waits, and she and Dean make out kittenishly on the sofa much to Stock’s discomfort. It’s the only strong hint we get at Dean’s suspected homosexuality (or maybe bisexuality), which is a shame as in that moment it gives the Stock/Dean dynamic some depth and intrigue other than, "I really, really wanna photograph you."
But Stock does really, really want to photograph Dean, recognizing his incipient star power and is hopeful of a career-making ride on his coattails. And so he gets a tentative okay from Life, provided he can deliver his photos before the "East of Eden" premiere, and the rest of the film is basically Stock pursuing Dean around New York, and then Indiana, on the farm where he grew up.
READ MORE: Robert Pattinson Photographs Dane DeHaan In Clip From Anton Corbjin’s ‘Life’
Perhaps in the past Corbijn’s casts, populated with more experienced older actors like George Clooney ("The American") and Philip Seymour Hoffman ("A Most Wanted Man"), have supplied whatever may be lacking in the director’s lexicon as it regards performance. But [kisses rosary, commends soul to Jesus] neither Pattinson nor DeHaan, promising as they may be, have that many miles on the clock yet, and there’s a hesitance in the work of both actors. DeHaan actually benefits from the ostensibly thankless task of playing Dean (and from certain angles, at certain times, he looks uncannily like him), who at least has a fully-fledged persona he can play into or try to subvert (seldom the latter). Sadly, Pattinson’s Stock is given much less to do or be, bar a few fleeting moments when his jealousy or resentment of Dean is suggested. Written as a blank slate, he remains so throughout much of the film — though there is a scene in which he vomits on his son, which is awesomely bizarre amid so much muted, frictionless interaction.
Elsewhere, Ben Kingsley gets to have a little fun as mercurial power broker Jack Warner, who alternates between assurances of his studio’s absolute investment in Dean’s success and threats to "fuck" him if he fails to toe the party line. The film’s episodic narrative allows for some cameos (among them Corbijn’s own), which are good for their, "Huh, James Dean knew Eartha Kitt?" value at least. In fact, there’s the peculiar sense throughout "Life" that we’re biding our time until we get to the next recreation of a famous image — Dean at the barber, Dean clowning around on the farm, Dean (of course) in Times Square, an image so famous as to have become a cliche.
To be fair, Corbijn does an impressive job of restaging those moments, so much so that one might suspect that he’s not really interested in the people these guys were as much as he is interested in the images — in the interplay of light and dark, the composition, the clothing, the locations. That’s where he seems to come to life, and suddenly I wondered if the whole rest of the film was really just a smokescreen for an experiment in imitation. If so, it may have been successful, but at the cost of the film around it. Corbijn is great at taking real-life flesh and blood people and alchemically rendering them in striking 2-dimensional images that transcend and mythologize the reality, but "Life" shows him fall some way short of achieving the reverse. [C+/B-]
This is a reprint of our review from the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival.
The very same forces in 1950\’s Hollywood that helped snuff out one of the most dangerous and revolutionary theatrical artists of the twentieth century are essentially no different than the contemporary forces today who consistently mythologize and reanimate with perverse and necrophilia-like glee his conveniently short time on earth…and why movies like these always fail because of their innate spiritual pollution in the very act of trying to re-create something completely outside of the very process of re-creation itself. Could there be no more laughable and self-immolating dialogue that this: "I want to photograph him because he\’s pure….there\’s nothing there that\’s fake."
Dennis Stock and James Dean were two men whose paths crossed for just a short moment in time, who each, an artist in his own right, made iconic history, and who each saw in each other what they lacked in themselves. In an interview, Robert Pattinson explained Anton Corbijn’s take on the movie as being about the photographer Dennis Stock. Dane Dehaan’s take on the movie was about the legendary actor James Dean, while Robert Pattinson focused on the personal character of Dennis Stock as a talented, but flawed human being, who struggles to have a relationship with his son based on his own past. Robert Pattinson intricately encompassed the aspects of photographer, artist, father and his acquaintance with James Dean, into Dennis Stock, which makes him a very complex character. He absolutely nails this performance. Robert builds the character of Stock to where his relationship with Dean comes to a crescendo, and Stock’s façade begins to crack, and Jimmy is drawn in enough to hear something besides the sound of his own voice. This is an intricate peek into the lives of two artists who want to make a creative difference while avoiding the personal aspect of their lives. Every human being has a past that becomes part of their future, unless they are moved by someone or some experience that makes change not only possible, but inevitable. This is a good movie. What Robert Pattinson’s does with the role of Dennis Stock is “superb”.
I\’m pretty sure C+ is always negative, so I\’m not sure why you are arguing (I suspect the B- was part of the rosary kiss).
The best thing about your comment is that it reminded me of the theme song of Coupling…perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. I loved that show. Now I\’m going to have to see if it\’s online anywhere.
Since when is a B-/C+ considered a negative review? Congratulations, you just lowered the score on RottenTomatoes. And perhaps the "hesitation" you complain about was in the script. Perhaps it was exactly what the director wanted, to show the fragility of the brand new relationship between the photographer and his subject. Perhaps it was exactly the way it should have been. Stock was a socially awkward guy and Dean doesn\’t seem to have been the most easy to be with person, either. Overall, the film deserved a better review than this and a better score.