Director: Sjoerd van Mackelenbergh
Writer: Sjoerd van Mackelenbergh
Cast: Mahmoud Alsayed, Nick Stankevich, Vijendra Chaubey
Running time: 7mins
People who make art can be a little too guilty of treating their process as something inherently interesting. Perhaps this is the by-product of the celebrity age, where endless seas of biopics and documentaries insist on turning the lives of famous creatives into convenient and profitable narratives. There are some cases where that can deliver interesting results – but frankly, they are much fewer in number than the number of tedious trudges on the matter.
So, while many writers and filmmakers have come to regard writer’s block as a get-out-of-jail-free card – because in this world, who wouldn’t want to hear about how I’m plagued by creative impotence – being served up another of these stories is as compelling an offering as spending seven minutes watching paint dry.
Sjoerd van Mackelenbergh’s film opens with a flat shot of an abstract painting, hanging on a blank wall next to a small rectangle of paper with the artist’s name on it, as if it were in a museum of modern art. The setting – complete with non-committal middle-class discussions about the painting’s ‘meanings’ – are supposed to confirm the success of the work, because it has become established cultural currency of the elite. But the painting doesn’t feel like anything special.
Looking at the two chaotic lines of blue and red paint, which clash in the middle of the canvas, the painter has practically telegraphed vague messaging around ‘conflict’ onto the white sheet – and while it looks nice, this is hardly an astounding way of having done that. At the same time, the minimal lengths ‘the gallery’ have gone to showcasing this piece of genius seem to play into this feeling. They have not framed the painting, or put it behind glass, which makes it seem cheap, and at best a low priority (especially in the age of Extinction Rebellion). Meanwhile, the idle tattle of the guests plumps up ‘opinions’ so non-descript that it is hard to believe the commenters have even been bothered to look at the painting. “Oh… it’s about uh… wanting to leave society or something?”
This is a problem, because this artefact, this priceless piece of thought-provoking creativity, is supposed to drive the rest of the story. We are supposed to wonder how on Earth someone produced such an arresting and original piece of work – but looking at it, and the sad mise-en-scene of its framing, we already get the idea that it’s not going to be particularly interesting.
Cut to an undetermined amount of time before this showcase. The artist (Mahmoud Alsayed) sits himself down, in front of the most intimidating thing in his life: a blank canvas. He wants to produce something astounding – but wouldn’t you just know, he can’t think of anything. This might have still been an interesting base from which to perform a character study. Why might it be that this man has such an empty mind? Is it that his life resembles the blank canvas – and that he lives in a safe, middle-class bubble where the most he has to worry about is not knowing what to paint today? Or is it that there are things which bother him, but which he either lacks the courage or knowhow to energise his work with those conflicts?
Instead, we get a second-rate spoof of Inside Out, where two internal personalities squabble inside the head of the artist. One is a chill guy, who is happy as long as he has chips to munch upon (Vijendra Chaubey), the other is an irritating, blue-sky creative (Nick Stankevich). In this scenario, there are still opportunities for arcs. Chaubey might be presented as stupid or lazy, before gazumping his nagging roommate with the perfect concept. Or Stankevich might realise that to produce something authentic that speaks to people, he needs to chill out and stop impersonating an American marketing executive. Both actors show signs they could play more complex characters than they are permitted. But nobody reaches any kind of realisation – after endlessly spit balling ideas, drinking and partying, their bickering over nothing eventually sees them come to blows – which apparently provides the creative spark needed to finally put paint to paper (though I feel like actually taking this figurative scenario of a brain at war with itself would either have seen the artist have a mental breakdown or a stroke – rather than immediate create a masterpiece).
And just like that, there it is. The piece from the start of the film. It has indeed been born out of conflict – but a conflict with nothing at its heart. So, after insisting that we take another look into the complex and torturous process of creating something, all that has been confirmed is that the painting is as vapid as we first suspected. It was created with no intent or insight, beyond a mildly cynical instinct to pump out content for content’s sake.
One thing which should be said in Piece of Art’s defence, is that it was submitted as a student project. That is not to say it should be given a free pass – because we get plenty of student films that aren’t as unimaginative as this – but it is worth noting that student filmmaking can be restrictive, depending on what the assignment was responding to, and what the artists were told was important during the project. Perhaps an original script was not at all important to the teachers grading this piece (the soundtrack, crammed with honking synthetic strings from a royalty free music site certainly wasn’t), in which case, who cares if audiences won’t relate to these underexplored characters? But if that is the case, everything else is so underwhelming – the pedestrian cinematography, the bland lighting, the half-hearted set dressing – that it is tough to tell what actually was the priority here.