Final Portrait

I understand that there are people that may have problems with this movie. It can be a frustrating movie to watch. But it can also be, funny, exasperating and sad. The acting is great. I don't place a judgement on the artist's behavior. He was as he was. This movie is about the artistic process, and the collaboration in that process. It can be tedious, chaotic and at times mesmerizing. It reminded me of a few of my friends who are artists. They truly do see the world in a different way, and at times you just have to go with it.

Loved the film, it is definitely not for everyone, as an art student it was rather interesting to see an artists process of making a painting. The film itself is rather small, it is centred around one particular event. The acting is great. I would recommend it to artists and people who are interested in creative process of making an artwork.

An interesting portrait about the painter Giacometti at the end of his life, when he painted his last painting before he died. It is curious to see their crises, their insecurities and dissatisfactions in the act of creating. And Geoffrey Rush is very well in the role of the painter while creating an interesting relationship with the character of Armie Hammer.

The search for perfection is an endless workflow. It is a routine in which there is always time for a walk with a friend, an affair with a muse or a fight with a wife.

The peculiarity of this picture is that Tucci does not dramatize the reality of life. He shows everything as it happens in it. A good well-done shot story about the true love of artists for their craft.

Although in the '60's I knew famous artists could live in hovels, I never imagined the way Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush), the famous sculptor/painter, lived. In Final Portrait, his grimy Parisian first-floor apartment is strewn with famous spindly-limbed sculptures amid broken pottery and glass with an easel on which he paints a portrait of his friend, James Lord (Armie Hammer).

I am usually critical of stories about painters because these biopics rarely give insight into the artistic process (Girl with a Pearl Earring, Frida, and Pollock among my favorites, but disappointing that way), concentrating rather on the dynamic personal life. However, Final Portrait lets us sit with his subject and ingest the cranky chaos that has already bred world-wide fame.

While his wife Annette Arm (Sylvie Testud), is in attendance, the artist carries on at length with a delightful prostitute, Caroline (Clemence Poesy), goes to dives, disrespects money, chain smokes, and generally acts like the Bohemian he is.

Such seems the stereotype, but writer/director Stanley Tucci deftly adapts Lord's book, A Giacometti Portrait, to let us experience the disarray of the process that takes weeks. The artist is disappointed multiple times, starts over, yet really believes no portrait is ever finished.

Alberto Giacometti keeps us hoping that another day of Lord's sitting will produce a result, yet another day comes and goes into weeks. Lord, a writer, is remarkably patient as we all know genius will not be hurried. When it's over, however, you can bet on its being world-class.

Rush is charming as the disheveled genius, while Hammer is handsome, as always, and subdued in the artist's presence. I was not bored for a second because I felt like a visitor witnessing the workings of chaotic brilliance, a true friendship, and the essence of Parisian artistic life.

Sit back and enjoy an artist at work. It may seem slow, but it's not.