“Dalíland” is a film directed by Mary Harron and starring Ben Kingsley.
The movie delves into the catastrophic yet alluring personality of the legendary Salvador Dalí, who has become a caricature of himself and elevated to a genius or symbol of an era.
The director takes the opportunity to provide a portrait of New York during that time, while Ben Kingsley shines in a role that any actor would want to play.
Movie Review
The movie is an easy portrayal of a character that is very easy to present superficially, and merely remain in a frivolous portrait, which, on the other hand, was the character that Dalí himself had invented, the Dalí that we all know and that the world looked at in amazement. What does this film bring beyond that? A couple of well-shot scenes and a reconstruction of the artistic environment of that era. There is little introspection and only the commonplaces that the painter himself left for the gallery, to leave his eccentric stamp, and in the end, no one really knew him.
With this “Dalíland,” viewers won’t know him any better; they will only see a great performance by Kingsley of a character that can only be played well, and there was no doubt that the actor would achieve it. There are not too many nuances, and the story of the boy who enters to meet the legend is already overdone, and it almost sounds like a formula or a cliché in this well-trodden territory of biopics.
Our Opinion
The film does not seem to want to make an effort to give us a more faithful portrait that we do not already know, of the thousand eccentricities of the most eccentric painter of all time.
For a movie about eccentricity, it is not very eccentric at its core.
Director
The Cast
Andreja Pejić
Suki Waterhouse