Dalíland: A Surreal Love Story, Seen from The Outside
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B+
Mary Harron’s first film, I Shot Andy Warhol, focused on a fame-obsessed New York artist and his would-be assassin, Valerie Solanas, an outsider to Warhol’s fabulous circle. Now she has returned to familiar ground with Dalíland, a film about the latter years the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and his wife, Gala, seen from the perspective of a humble assistant.
One day, handsome young art gallery gofer James (Christopher Briney) is delegated to carry a suitcase filled with cash to Dalí’s suite at New York’s St. Regis Hotel to be delivered to Gala. The gallery owner, Christoffe (Alexander Beyer) tells him couple are busy running up $20,000 a month in entertainment costs. He warns James that Gala — who is described as having “the libido of an electric eel” — will probably hit on him and he must reject her cautiously.
Though it’s only midday, James finds a party in full swing, with hangers-on including the airy beauty Ginesta (Suki Waterhouse), a possibly transgender future pop singer, Amanda Lear (Andreja Pejic) and Dalí ’s new bestie, the kohl-eyed shock rocker, Alice Cooper (Mark McKenna).
As predicted, the imperious Gala (the great German actress Barbara Sukowa) gives James a predatory once-over sniff. He later learns she’s preoccupied with “Jesus,” namely singer, Jeff Fenholt (Zachary Nachbar-Seckel), then playing the Messiah in the Broadway version of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Eventually, Dalí (Ben Kingsley) —the artist of the melting clocks that have adorned so many dorm room walls —makes a grand entrance at the party. His dyed black hair hangs to his shoulders, dressed in long, brocaded coats, and his waxed moustache sprouting from under his outsized nose like dragonfly wings.
Dalí doesn’t say things, he pronounces them, and he soon pronounces that James must come work for him. He dubs him “San Sebastian” for his beauty. (We later learn he gives that name to all good-looking young men). The gallery owner agrees on the condition that James keep the easily distracted artist on task to complete new works for an upcoming opening.
Soon, James finds himself engaging in various lavish lunches, running errands, and witnessing Gala’s new obsession with “Jesus,” whose affairs don’t seem to concern Dalí, who worships her. His own sexual inclinations appear restricted to voyeurism, which James finds out, awkwardly, during a three-way with Ginesta and one of her other boyfriends.
The film is directed by Harron, working from a script by her husband, John C. Walsh. Although this perspective of the apprentice on the fringe of the charmed circle is conventional, it also reflects a point-of-view favoured by Harron, a Canadian who emerged as one of the more incisive dissectors of pop culture in the American indie movement of the 1990s.
Along with her literary adaptations, American Psycho (2000) and The Moth Diaries (2003), her specialty has been off-kilter biographical dramas about the mania of fame: the beforementioned I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), The Notorious Betty Page (2006), the TV movie The Anna Nicole Story (about Anna Nicole Smith) and Charlie Says (2013), about the women around Charles Manson.
Harron’s history should be a pointer that Dalíland is not just a fun retro decadent romp. In Dalíland’s second half, when James is sent to Europe, the film shifts to a more sombre tone and fragmentary rhythm.
James discovers a massive money-grabbing art fraud, perpetrated by Gala and Dalí’s manager, in which pre-signed pieces of paper were later used for print reproductions of his work. The fraud risks ruining Dalí’s reputation, while the money goes into an album for Gala’s absurd “Jesus” protégé.
While pondering the mystery of this hate-love marriage, James comes to see that Gala is not a muse and vampiric monster, but an equal partner in the Dalí illusion game. Ten years older than her husband, she was the inspiration to many of the leading figures of the Surrealist movement, before she left Paris to throw her lot in with the young Catalan painter and champion his work.
While she clips his toenails, arranges his parties, and forces and inspires him to work, she doesn’t earn the respect she deserves. When Dalí went to Hollywood, she complains bitterly, people wanted to know who “the old lady” was that was travelling with him.
When Dalí attempts to explains their intense marriage pact to James, it’s as if he summons spirits. The two men appear on the rocky Catalan coast, where they watch as younger actors play out the memory scene, with the young Dalí played by Ezra Miller and Avital Lvova as the young Gala.
Possibly, no sane person could truly explain Dalí — who could account for the painter of Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano? — but Harron’s film maintains a wry compassion for these mad love birds, who have spent their lives defying convention and perhaps reality itself.
At best, perhaps Dalíland helps illuminate the muddle. As Dalí himself put it, “What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.”
Dalíland. Directed by Mary Harron. Written by John C. Walsh. Starring Ben Kingsley, Barbara Sukowa, Christopher Briney, Rupert Graves, Alexander Beyer, Andreja Pejic, Mark McKenna, Zachary Nachbar-Seckel, Suki Waterhouse, and Ezra Miller. In theatres June 9.