They say to never meet your heroes, but what if you were given the chance to meet a glorified version of your younger self?
This question is explored in Late Fame, documentarian Kent Jones’s new feature starring Willem Dafoe as Ed Saxberger, postal worker and former poet. Saxberger is approached on the street by an eager, earnest young man named Meyers (Edmund Donovan) who exudes awe and respect for Saxberger’s published poems from the 70s. Meyers convinces Saxberger to meet his writers group, a crew of aspiring writers in New York City…which really means they’re just a group of privileged kids who haven’t really experienced the world yet. All of them claim to be big fans of Saxberger and his works. The group, which later dubs themselves The Enthusiasm Society, are essentially Civil War reenactors for the golden days of art in New York. The club is—of course—all men, except for wannabe ingénue Gloria, who is expertly played by Greta Lee.
Saxberger is pulled back into the world of his glory days, reinvigorating his dreams of being a published capital-W “Writer.” He feels seen and heard and respected again, and he starts reminiscing about and reliving the old days, while also shedding his long-standing relationships like a snake skin to instead focus on his new, young friends. Over the course of the film, he slowly starts to realize, however, just how different these kids are from the folks he was writing with in his youth. He goes from his apartment, surrounded by well-loved books, notepads filled with his handwritten musings, and William Carlos Williams cassettes that stay within reach, to Meyers’s apartment: a sterile environment with no books, instead featuring framed photographs of William Carlos William covers and a decorative typewriter. Like his life experience and his work, Saxberger’s apartment was worked for, and Meyers’s was provided by his parents (you see, it was actually cheaper than paying for the dorms at NYU). His illusion of this group of intellectuals slowly unravels as the film interrogates what makes an artist an artist—is it enough to call yourself a writer if you’re not writing? Does it matter if you’re writing if no one is reading the work?
All of this is explored and held together by the writing of Samy Burch (May December), adapting the novella of the same name by Arthur Schnitzler (which was published posthumously, a fitting circumstance for the themes explored), the cinematography by Wyatt Garfield, who previously collaborated with Jones on Beasts of the Southern Wild, and the editing by Mike Selemon. The playful camerawork and sharp editing weave together the textures of a life and unravel when those textures aren’t present. The camera peeks around corners, catching glimpses, lurking, and witnessing these aspiring artists (and the paradox surrounding them).
The film itself is also an incredible critique of the “radical” rejection of modernity by those with the privilege to do so, examining the past as decorative artifact versus the past as an intrinsic part of who you are and your lived experience. While watching, I was also struck by the parallel between the idea that there are three sides to every story (yours, mine, and the truth), and that there are three people inside each of us—who we think we were, who we are, and who we have the potential to be. Each character grapples with all three throughout the course of the movie. As the writing group meets, they often do more talking about writing than actual writing. Each character is putting up a front, grappling with who they actually are and who they present to the world as. Characters say one thing while doing the complete opposite. A glass of absinthe goes untouched, a book of poems goes unread, a life passes by. An Alexa speaker plays classical music in a luxury loft, a JBL speaker stands in for a piano player during a cabaret performance.
We have seen so many variations of Dafoe, but rarely ever this stripped down, reflective version. While not a career best (and it would be impossible to rank his great volume of work), it’s certainly a late-career peak for Dafoe. The seasons of his career all collide in Late Fame. He so beautifully walks the line between courage and cowardice, growth and stagnation, and pride and shame. He’s likable and easy to root for, but he’s also egotistical and selfish, avoiding his dying brother and the friends who are too “low brow” for him in favor of these young intellectuals who are feeding his ego. There’s a moment late in the film where one of the members of The Enthusiasm Society approaches him for advice on his poems, citing Saxberger’s genius. It’s revealed that this younger poet hasn’t even read Saxberger’s poetry, he’s just been told it’s genius. Dafoe so perfectly wears the emotions of a man who realizes it was all a farce and he was playing pretend as much as these young wannabe artists were.
This performance and this film will age like the poems of Ed Saxberger—it will not end until it finds you. I was lucky enough to see this film early twice, once in May at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, and once for a members’ screening for Cinema/Chicago, and my appreciation for the film grew significantly even in those few short months. I can only imagine how much this film will mature and age and grow in estimation over the coming years.
