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dir: Terry Zwigoff
Wankers in their natural habitat
Misanthropy permeates Art School Confidential as it does with everything Zwigoff is involved with. His characters swim in it, bathe in it, drown in it. You expect it going in, you wear a snorkel in anticipation of it.

You can debate whether it is adolescent misanthropy, or the refined, mature misanthropy that comes with a lifetime of personal and professional disappointments. Whatever the level, if you like the work of Terry Zwigoff and the rogue’s gallery he associates with, then it’s likely you’ll find it entertaining.

The battlefield of the egos this time plays out at an art school, with every character held therein exhibiting different magnitudes of egomaniacal pretentiousness. Even our protagonist, Jerome (Max Minghella), is a bit of a preening egotist. But we are meant to see this place, the people and their awfulness through his eyes, until we realise he has become just as bad as them.

At first, at least, he is a headstrong but thoughtful young guy who wants to become a famous artist. Sure, it takes balls or ovaries to say that you’re going to change the world with your art, but great accomplishment sometimes requires monstrous arrogance. Jerome is only a little bit arrogant when the story begins.

He has genuine artistic ability, with drawing and painting skills to pay the bills, but he is surrounded by people so politically correct, post modern and idiotic that they can’t see the natural talent that he possesses, that shines from his every golden pore. Instead of crowning him the Picasso of his age, they deride, disavow and ridicule him at every turn. In his place, the worthless works of utter troglodytes and simpletons are praised to the high heavens.

Jerome starts off a boyish naïf, and progressively becomes cynical and embittered as the plot meanders on. Initially believing that talent will out and lead to his eventual triumph, he eventually discovers that there is no place for actual artistic ability in the art world.

Whilst all of this is going on, a serial killer is stalking and killing people at or around the school. The strangler seems to have even more hatred for the art world that the makers of this film do.

Jerome, who is out of his element throughout, is befriended by someone he has contempt for, who tries to teach him the interactions of the social networks and the dynamics of the system, to no avail. About the only other person who even notices Jerome is Audrey (Sophie Myles), who was the reason he even went to this particular art school in the first place. A photo of her as a life model beckons him more seductively than any siren’s call.

She, of course, is a player, and whilst he gets to see her naked, and draws her in a way that captures her true beauty for all the world to see and ignore, the romantic image he has of her in his mind cannot match the reality of who she is and what she’s like, which is ultimately as petty and grasping as the other monsters in the art scene.

His erstwhile friend introduces Jerome to an artist, who is the perfect Zwigoff slob monster in the tradition of the bad Santa in Bad Santa, Seymour and his repugnant friends in Ghost World and Robert Crumb and his dysfunctional family in the documentary Crumb.

Jim Broadbent plays the scuzzy Jimmy character with aplomb, which is a shmancy way of saying he overacts in a delightful manner. Jimmy makes the misanthropy explicit and loud, and as pungent as his feculent apartment. There’s nothing charming about his hatred of all things human, and as the story goes on we get an idea as to how far that loathing can go. It’s as nasty and vicious as anything Broadbent is likely to do in his life. The stench of his hatred practically wafts off of the screen.

In a flick overloaded with star cameos already, John Malkovich plays a feckless professor whose mediocre (at best) work is decades in the past, where he battled and lost in his fight against triangles. Now he’s content to spout the same pseudo-intellectual crap as the students, and is not above sleazing onto his male students, Jerome included. He offers to help Jerome broaden his horizons with experiences which probably amount to little more than having wrinkly, unpleasant sex with his students. It’s not like it’ll get them a better mark.

As the killer stalks the campus claiming more victims, and the students aspire to getting some kind of good mark for their output, Jerome becomes increasingly despondent and desperate in love and in his artistic pursuits. He realises that his work cannot get recognised because he doesn’t know how to play the game, he knows that he can’t really compete for Audrey since she’s going to social butterfly her way around from whoever the latest scenester scene star is to the next one.

One fellow student, and the one getting most of the attention and adulation, is not even an artist at all. Jonah (Matt Keeslar) makes the most simplistic and childish drawings, not out of any camp aesthetic or as a piss-take, but because he’s genuinely crap. He, of course, becomes the darling of the art world.

When a former graduate comes back to be feted by the aspiring masses, he insults and ridicules the school, the teachers and the students, and justifies it by saying that his success allows him the luxury to treat other people like shit. He literally says this, and the audience nods as if it’s his right instead of hooting at him with contempt.

Jerome tries sucking up and down, he tries dumbing his stuff down, he tries copying and playing the stupid popularity game, but he cannot get anywhere. Until, that is, he submits someone else’s work as his own. Work that seems to be intimately connected to the murders happening on the campus.

Though the maker’s contempt for the art scene, art school, art people and people in general is evident in almost every scene, Zwigoff manages to maintain a fairly light touch even as the story degenerates into more farcical directions as the story goes on. As an example of light relief, Jerome’s roommate Vince (Ethan Suplee), a talentless buffoon and wannabe director is shown trying to make a clearly retarded action flick as part of his project. It looks appalling, but he’s clearly based on some people Zwigoff has less than complete respect for. If, in the final scenes of the flick, he isn’t supposed to be a dead ringer for Kevin Smith, I’ll eat my copy of Chasing Amy without any lubricant.

Of course, with so many repellent characters, there’s really no-one to relate to. We’re meant to relate to Jerome, since he’s supposed to see through all this crap with clear eyes, but his issue isn’t that the system is terrible, it’s that he’s not able to succeed in it. When he makes an insane decision at the end of the film to finally achieve his goals of artistic glory, it’s hard to see it as a positive, or to see him as anything less than the worst sell-out possible.

Art School Confidential is less a film to enjoy, and more a film to be archly amused by if it takes your fancy. The irony is that the people it most viciously derides are also the only likely audience for such a flick. Fair warned, be thee, says I.

6 times the appropriate ending to this flick should have been someone flying a plane into John Malkovich out of 10

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“And remember, only 1 out of 100 of you will ever make a living as an artist.” – inspirational words, Art School Confidential.