Local Color Talks About Art

What could be more artless?

A A A Comments (2) By Aaron Hillis Wednesday, Jun 24 2009

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Local Color
Directed by George Gallo
Opens June 26, Quad Cinema

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How is it that a film about the love of art can make art seem so detestable? Years before scripting Midnight Run and The Whole Ten Yards, writer-turned-director George Gallo was first an impressionist landscape painter, and his life-changing experiences from the summer of 1974 apparently resembled Ralph Macchio's leg-sweeping coming of age in The Karate Kid. Standing in for the young Gallo, Trevor Morgan stars as John, an impassioned, naïve teenager who begins pestering a vodka-swilling Russian genius of a brushman named Nicoli (Armin Mueller-Stahl) to teach him the true meaning of Christmas. Curmudgeonly and insultingly curt, Nicoli nicknames John "the little shit," drops F-bombs to prove to us that he's grouchy, and forces his young protégé into wallpapering his room and doing other maintenance chores. (Painting the fence would obviously be redundant.) Sappy and overworked, the film swells and stays swollen with on-the-nose uplift, such as the eureka moment when John learns that clouds aren't really just white, or when nearby neighbor Carla (Samantha Mathis) gives him his first electrifying kiss. The characters talk stiltedly and broadly about the art of art, and there's nothing more artless than that.

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Richard Ferguson 07/30/2009 8:09:00 AM

Karate Kid was a Hollywood made for teen bucks film based on some producer's notion of what would sell. Local Color at least, has a basis in reality. And that is one of the film's points that reality, no matter how dismal, must contain something of beauty left or we cease being human. Art is the common ground and in the words of Nicoli, "If there is no beauty, there is no art". The film takes place in the time period when Abstract Expressionism and other Shock Art styles were the establishment approved forms of expression. Representational painters like the fictional Nicoli and Andrew Wyeth were attacked by the art establishment as being "retrograde" and "irrelevant". If you are not an artist, you may have missed the battle. I lived through it and experienced the virulent attacks and exclusion of realist artists. Thankfully, modernism bit the well deserved dust and realist art is now taking its place as both modern and relevant. I think viewers will enjoy the art talk, especially the scene where Nicoli discusses a blank, black canvas with a local so-called artist. He explains how he has explored the two dimensional flatness of the canvas. Nonsense? Take a look at Robert Rauschenberg's White Painting (Three Panel). Local Color makes its point while still managing to keep its charm and bittersweetness. It doesn't wallow in sentimentality as it very well could have. Neither is it a dry extolation of the virtues of Art or the lack thereof. It does hit the nail on the head and ends with a feeling that there is hope that no matter how much cruelty life hits us with there is still beauty and hope to be found. This film is well acted, directed with passion and has the authenticity and unvarnished truth of the true story it portrays.
Robert 06/30/2009 6:52:00 AM

I just saw this movie last night in Corvallis Oregon and we all thought the same thing...this is what American needs to watch, what a beautiful and rich story...it is a story everyone can relate to in one way or another. "Why can't Hollywood Studios make movies like this?" I'm just wondering if this moron Aaron saw the same film. Did he miss the beginning of the film "Based on a true story" that means based on true characters too, you idiot. Then again I think most all "critic's" are frustrated that they are incapable of ever writing anything positive about a topic that actually has substance. Aaron, find a new job. Local Color is a great movie, don't be influenced by this completely incompetent review.