Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is the best portrait of an artist I've ever seen. I was completely entralled by the film. Because Warhol was both tremendously inventive and horribly cruel, I alternately felt a sense of awe and disgust. Warhol's genius and callousness are both fleshed out. Despite the turbulent content of the film, I was simply exhilerated throughout.
Having watched this excellent film, I feel a greatly enriched appreciation for Warhol's art---a sense of what it said, how it worked, and how it became a cliche. (I was particularly ill-informed about Warhol's films, which were discussed in great detail.)
The Factory--where Warhol worked (but seldom played) and where transvestites, drifters, and creative spirits intermingled--is featured in healthy portions. This locale comes across as one of those rare places in history where the geist of a era is spatially concentrated. Here, in this one extraordinary place of production, Warhol and others fomented art and a vision of a post-Fordist world. This film is essential viewing (like the Weather Underground or Berkeley in the Sixties) for those who want to ingest and comprehend the paradigm shift of the "1960s."
Warhol's cruel indifference to the self-destruction of those around him is critically revealed. While some in the Factory drank and drugged themselves to death, Warhol passively watches, always remaining cool, detached, and voyeuristic.
The attempted homicide on Warhol, his commercialism, and his later years are all mentioned. I would fault the film for not showing Warhol speak on film more often, for not really considering his cooptation by capitalism, and for skipping over his influence in art and in popular society.
I must admit though, that the film is brilliantly executed, and well worth your time and nickel.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (2006)
"He was the most American of artists and the most artistic of Americans," one man later said – "so American in fact that he is almost invisible to us."ANDY WARHOL – a riveting and often deeply moving film portrait of the most famous and famously controversial artist of the second half of the twentieth century – is the first to explore the complete spectrum of Warhol's astonishing artistic output, stretching across five decades from the late 1940's to his untimely death in 1987.Combining powerful on-camera interviews and rare still and motion picture footage, it is also the first to put Warhol himself – his humble family background and formative experiences in Pittsburgh, and his crucial apprenticeship as a commercial artist in New York – back into the presentation of his life.
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