[yasr_overall_rating]
The documentary explores the pre-fame years of the celebrated American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and how New York City, its people, and tectonically shifting arts culture of the late 1970s and ’80s shaped his vision.
It’s funny that a documentary that in its very title claims to center on a late-20th Century Neo-expressionism artist has so little to say about its subject. Sara Driver’s laconic film plays more like a curious glimpse at the New York art scene – specifically the late-1970s-to-early-1980s period when Primitivism meshed with urban culture.
Years before Banksy shook the world with his provocative street art, folks like Lee Quiñones – one of the most eloquent and charismatic “talking heads” in “Boom for Real” – rose to fame with often-political messages graffitied on NYC Subway trains. In the midst of this bohemian, cocaine and heroin-driven movement, when Warhol’s novelty was fading and being replaced by dingy clubs with sweaty performance artists, a young Jean-Michel Basquiat managed to stand out with his cryptic epigrams and defiance of conventions. Yet apart from a set of repeated images of the young artist, as well as several reoccurring shots of him spraying paint on walls, we don’t get to learn much about what drove him, who or what his inspirations were, or anything new, really, about his “late teenage years.”
Those with the slightest knowledge of Basquiat’s life won’t be surprised to find out that he was basically homeless prior to his rise to fame, crashing at friends’ places and then living in a grimy apartment, where he made art from salvage and trash he collected. He painted freely, inspiration gushing out of him as naturally as geysers do, hanging out at the aforementioned clubs but, according to the doc, never really being a part of them. Driver idolizes her subject, neatly side-stepping his own addiction to heroin and glazing over the controversy. Even the credits at the end display the year of his death – but not the fact that he overdosed in his NoHo studio. Yes, it’s about his teenage years, but the frankly middling collection of archival footage on display here doesn’t justify a full-length doc. A bit of realness in this “boom” would have been welcome.
The film does get much more interesting with folks like Quiñones, Jim Jarmusch, Jennifer Jazz and Fab 5 Freddy waxing poetic about the good ol’ days. Some of the stories involve Basquiat directly, some indirectly, some don’t involve him at all – but the doc does an admirable job at immersing us into that period, mostly through their stories, when sky was the limit and expression of thought, the sheer freedom of it, resulted in some truly memorable works of art.
Perhaps if Driver either trimmed her doc to a short, it would make for a compelling and poetic glimpse at Basquiat’s rise to fame. On the other hand, if she were to expand it and delve even deeper into the griminess and beauty of that period’s art scene, warts and all, it would make for a passionate and heartrending doc.
If you know little about Basquiat, check out Julian Schnabel’s biopic titled, um, “Basquiat,” with Jeffrey Wright embodying the legendary artist. If, however, you are well-versed in all things Basquiat and are more interested in the art scene that spawned him, give “Boom for Real” a shot… just don’t expect too much insight.
In theaters Friday, May 11th
