A BIGGER SPLASH Movie Review

Jack Hazan's dramatized portrait of the life of, friends of, and work of painter David Hockney is one of the more bizarre and curious cultural artifacts of the 1970s. A semi-improvised and hugely self-aggrandizing examination of how the split between Hockney (playing himself) and his lover influenced, inspired, and generally affected his work. This kind of biopic about artists usually doesn't get made until the subject has passed on, and even then the direct connections often made between actual events and the art they inspire come off as hooey—like Charlton Heston gazing at a cloud formation and suddenly realizing what's missing from the Sistine Chapel. Here Hockney prattles on about his work, (which, of course, is rather wonderful and not to be confused with this film) and writer/director/cinematographer Hazan records it all in arresting images that are slavishly “suggested” by Hockney's paintings (as was the movie's title). If Vanity Press had a film distribution arm, A Bigger Splash would be available in coffee-table sized cassette packaging, personally autographed in limited, numbered, mass-produced quantities complete with a certificate of inauthenticity. “Art has to move you and design does not,” Hockney told the Guardian in 1988, “unless it's a good design for a bus.” This film, as carefully designed as it is, will get you nowhere.

NEXT STOP … Lust for Life, I Shot Andy Warhol, Basquiat

1974 105m/C GB D: Jack Hazan; W: Jack Hazan, David Mingay. M: Patrick Gowers. VHS