By George & Josh Bate
In recent years, Willem Dafoe has quietly established himself one of the most respected and versatile actors working today. Equipped with an uncanny ability to embody into whatever character he’s playing, Dafoe demonstrates remarkable range, playing unhinged villains like the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man franchise to more intimate characters like Vincent Van Gogh.
Dafoe’s versatility is highlighted once again in Late Fame, screening at this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival. The four-time Academy Award nominee plays Ed Saxberger, a post office worker who, in the late 1970s, wrote a series of poems that never quite got the attention or recognition he sought. Decades later, Saxberg’s work garners unexpected appreciation from an eclectic group of young artists, including Gloria (Greta Lee), an actress particularly eager to get Saxberger’s attention.
Not only carrying, but elevating a low-key, quirky indie movie to something far more profound, Dafoe is the primary reason to watch Late Fame. He plays a man who enjoys his life but also yearns for an alternate reality, one where his poetry took off and he made his art a career. Saxberger remains haunted by a future that never came to fruition, a mentality that explains why he becomes so entranced by the infatuation his new friends show him.
Stripped down to its bare bones, director Kent Jones’ film explores universally relatable themes in a rather unique story. The film explores our tendency to reflect, to look back on the past with a mix of happiness, sadness, and regret, rather than live in the moment and face the life we have ahead of us. Even as Saxberger’s particular line of work may not resonate with viewers, his desire to be recognized and tendency to linger on the past will certainty will.
The friends that Saxberger makes imbue Late Fame with a sense of intrigue. Their affection for the lead character’s work is so strong that it almost seems suspicious, especially from Meyers, the de facto leader of the group played by Edmund Donovan. Saxberger also develops a romantic connection with Gloria, an aspiring actress in the group with an eccentric personality that mesmerizes Dafoe’s character. Their relationship is a sign that Saxberger is diving deeper and deeper into said reflection of his life, and the positives and negatives that such reflection posters. Saxberger relegates his decades-old friends to the periphery in exchange for a new, younger group of companions, a series of decisions that allows Jones to examine regret and the fracture of our values in light of unexpected developments. This makes Late Fame a film not only about reflection and introspection, but appreciating what you have rather than focusing on what you don’t.
Unfortunately, the sense that the young crew harbor sinister motives ends up being the film’s fatal flaw. The screenplay from Samy Burch (May December) intentionally forces the audience to ponder over the true nature of these characters, but, in the process, the film creates an expectation that an additional, more insidious layer will be eventually added to the story. When this doesn’t come to fruition, Late Fame loses steam and collapses, in part, from the weight of expectations it established.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
Willem Dafoe cements his status as one of the industry’s most quietly versaitle and brilliant actors working today with Late Fame, a drama that intimately examines regret, reflection, and our tendency to linger on pasts that have long since subsided. Although it disappoints in swerving away from a potentially more insidious throughine that the film initially appears to set up, Kent Jones’ latest work operates nicely as a contemplative, intimate character study of a person whose psychology will resonate universally.