Alice Neel

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12/01/2012 Lovingly produced documentary. See more 04/12/2012 I like a lot of Neel's work, so I enjoyed this. The documentary has something to say to anyone, regardless of your feeling about Alice Neel or her work. Fascinating, disturbing, and inspirational, all at once. See more 05/30/2011 A fascinating portrait that goes to great lengths to uncover the costs of being steadfast in pursuing an artistic life. See more 07/27/2009 we completely enjoyed this as a birthday movie. quite a few paintings i was unfamiliar with and the camera did a pretty good job of lingering over them. the interviews and psychological analysis could have easily ruined the movie, but i was surprised at how thoughtful most were. sort of properly constrained so that it all felt very immediate and authentic. after a certain point, the paintings are really kind of beyond discussion. See more Mike M 05/28/2009 As a portrait of someone who laboured away without ever quite finding the recognition they deserved in their lifetime - a woman so independent of everybody else she even resisted the feminist movement's attempts to carry her aloft on her shoulders - the film is strongest evoking the artist's isolation, the feeling that, as painter Chuck Close puts it, "you're broadcasting, but no-one's picking up the signal". Could it be that the despair visible in Neel's subjects' eyes was a reflection upon the artist herself? I'm less certain how much credence to give to her offspring's handwringing, and how much it's just a useful hook upon which to sell a documentary these days; compared to, say, the kids in "Capturing the Friedmans" or Jonathan Caouette in "Tarnation", the Neels seem to have done OK for themselves, having developed in absentia parentis a streak of self-preservation that's served them well in their professional lives. There's a revealing contrast between Alice, who refused to seek a divorce on the grounds it was "bourgeois", and her sons, who - while burdened with a certain weight of neurotic baggage - went on to become doctors, lawyers and good company men. Inadvertently, the film raises the question of how one might rebel against a parent so far outside the norms of mainstream society, then answers it with aplomb: they put on a suit, make a fair bit of money for themselves, and spend the occasional off night wondering why mommy never painted them a rose garden. See more 04/28/2007 [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]Alice Neel is one of the best films of the year, and surely will be a top contender for the Best Documentary Oscar.[/size][/font] [img]http://www.seethink.com/images/ALICE%20POSTER_web.jpg[/img] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]I walked out of the theater on cloud 9. It was as if the spirit of Alice Neel, who’s been dead for some years now, reached out from the screen and wrapped her loving arms around all of us. Her spirit filled the theater.[/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]Her grandson, who made the film, has given her an astonishingly beautiful and serious tribute. It doesn’t romanticize unduly. Neel’s failings are put clearly on the table. Her parenting skills, for example, were to some degree deplorable. Her sons talk on camera a lot, and while it’s perfectly clear that they loved her tremendously, their anger about certain things is also transparent. A particularly ugly episode had her turning a blind eye while a boyfriend of hers was recurringly abusive toward one of her sons.[/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS][img]http://www.virginiamiller.com/gallery/News/images/Alice-Neel.jpg[/img][/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]The film doesn't just talk about her life. It also is a sumptuous artistic feast. Something on the order of 100 paintings are photographed carefully, so you can sit back and revel in these gorgeous and sometimes painful paintings, as the speakers talk. The music is also beautiful and fits wonderfully with the visuals.[/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]It's not a perfect film though. I did feel in the middle that it was wandering around unsure of where it was going. But it eventually gets itself back on track.[/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]One particularly noteworthy thing about Neel as an artist is how she spurned the art establishment and never did any hobnobbing. She left Greenwich Village (which was the epicenter of painting in the 1950s) and moved to Spanish Harlem “to paint real people” and to dwell with them. She was such a committed artist, that she wouldn’t cater to the art establishment. It was all about the painting for her, not the building of a career. I found that ferocious integrity to be inspiring.[/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]In the end she did become a star, but only in her last decade of life. There’s one amazing scene where Andy Warhol himself bursts into the room to shower her with praise and kisses. She appeared to know him personally by that time and to adore him. But oddly, at no time in the film is his name even mentioned. In fact she never talked about other artists at all, and it doesn’t appear she ever went to see other people’s work. She stayed in and around her uptown apartment painting people from the neighborhood day and night.[/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]She said painting was “an obsession” for her.[/font][/size] [size=3][font=Trebuchet MS]If there’s one art-house film you see this year, make it Alice Neel.[/font][/size] See more Read all reviews

Alice Neel

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