An absinthe-soaked love letter from one bohemian bad-boy artist to another, Johnny Depp’s cumbersomely titled Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness is a freewheeling semi-biopic of Amedeo Modigliani, the Jewish-Italian painter and sculptor who carved a scandalous reputation in early 20th century Paris. Enjoying a debauched whirl of drink and drugs, bar-room brawls and promiscuous bed-hopping, Modigliani mixed with Picasso and Brâncusi, Diego Rivera and Jean Cocteau, but never achieved comparable success in his short life. He died of tubercular meningitis in 1920, aged just 35. His signature long-necked, elegantly stylised portraits only became hugely valuable decades later. In 2015, one of his paintings sold for a record-breaking $170 million.
Of course, Depp has had a bumpy ride over the last six years, his superstar career imploding over accusations of domestic abuse from his former wife Amber Heard, and the subsequent legal battles over his tarnished reputation. All the same, he continues to work as an actor, producer and director, and seems to have found a sympathetic audience at European film festivals for his recent output of smaller indie projects, many of them interesting and worthy efforts. A regular guest in San Sebastián, Depp is back at the Spanish festival again this week with the world premiere of Modi, which screens out of competition. He will next take the film to Rome, where he will pick up a Lifetime Achievement Award. If this is what “cancel culture” looks like, we should all hope to enjoy this level of cancellation.
Modi is only Depp’s second feature following his poorly received debut The Brave (1997). But regardless of the director’s ongoing career struggles, even if you are a die-hard fan, this boorish biographical drama is a disappointing mess. Clumsy and witless, visually drab and tonally incoherent, it is far less roguishly charming than it believes itself to be. The best you can say about this self-indulgent misfire is that it is not even the worst film about Modigliani, coming a close second to the Mick Davis-directed Modigliani (2004) starring Andy Garcia.
Loosely adapted from the 1980 stage play Modigliani by Dennis McIntyre, but with its new extended title borrowed from Baudelaire, Modi stars the broodingly handsome Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio, who makes the most of a thankless and unsympathetic role. The action takes place over three days in 1916, a febrile period when Modigliani was torn between painter and sculptor, low-life vagabond and emerging cult figure. Meanwhile, as the mass slaughter of the Great War slowly creeps into Paris, the sickly artist keeps hallucinating sinister crow-faced plague doctors, a portent of his own premature death.
Thronged by an adoring entourage of fellow artists, notably the hygienically challenged Chaïm Soutine (a painfully unfunny comic turn by Ryan McParland, sporting a terrible Borat accent) and the mentally fragile Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gueri), Modi shambles around Paris, picking fights with all and sundry, including his endlessly patient Polish art dealer Léopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham). In between sex, hashish and poetry sessions, he also routinely declares his genius to his English poet-critic lover Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat), who naturally worships him even more for being such a mansplaining diva: “you’re quite the bastard, aren’t you?” she tells him with an approving smile. Or is she addressing Depp?
Modi actually began as a passion project for Al Pacino, who has a producer credit and supporting role here. Pacino earmarked Modigliani’s story for the screen decades ago, first pitching it to Depp when they co-starred in Donnie Brasco (1997), but previous attempts to make a film with the younger star in the lead never came together. For this version, Depp remains firmly behind the camera, though he clearly identifies closely with his proto-punk anti-hero.
In case the autobiographical subtext is unclear, Depp has stressed in his promotional interviews that he views Modi as a personal role model. “Everything Modigliani ever stood for,” he said recently, “resonates deeply within me.” A recurring theme in the screenplay is that these towering, trailblazing, uncompromising artists can not be judged by the petty moral standards of mere mortals. Indeed, one of Modi’s final pay-off lines is “no more judgement.” The sense of him being a self-justifying mouthpiece for Depp recurs throughout the film.
With modern-day Budapest standing in for early 20th century Paris, not very convincingly, Modi gets almost everything wrong from start to finish, from hammy performances to leaden plotting, jarringly pretentious dialogue to mirthless slapstick clowning. There is much worth dramatising about the real Modigliani, who disguised his bourgeois roots to slum it as a proto-beatnik, fathered multiple children, partied with various Parisian demi-monde legends, and wilfully concealed his dangerously infectious condition. But Depp and his screenwriters are far more interested in rehashing that tired, self-serving, adolescent myth that great artists should be hot-tempered, intoxicated, sexually incontinent hellraisers unshackled from social convention. And, of course, men. In Depp-world, absinthe always makes the art grow stronger.
Dedicated to Depp’s friend, the late rock icon Jeff Beck, Modi only really succeeds in a few minor details. The screen switches from colour to flickering monochrome at various points, paying visually inventive homage to the silent comedies of the period. The soundtrack is also richly layered, from Sacha Puttnam’s period-pastiche score to vintage tracks by Tom Waits and The Velvet Underground. Late in the film, Pacino relishes his set-piece extended cameo as a pompous art collector who insults Modigliani by disdaining his paintings before offering him a huge paycheck for a single sculpture. Pacino is reliably charismatic but this performance leans very much into his accent-mangling, face-pulling, steam-belching late-career baroque style rather than the wired Method-era intensity of his classic roles.
The most striking impression that Modi leaves behind is is how Depp, having worked with many of the greatest directors and screenwriters in cinema, appears to have learned almost nothing from any of them. Much like his fictionalised version of Modigliani, he seems to have made this film surrounded by craven yes men who left all of his bad decisions unchallenged. Imagine the movie equivalent of a boorishly drunk barfly pestering you with rambling, tiresome cliches he has mistaken for profound poetic insights. Eager to prove his serious artistic credentials at this shaky stage in his career, Depp once again proves that, deep down, he is pretty shallow. To steal a line often wrongly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, sometimes it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Director: Johnny Depp
Screenplay: Jerzy Kromolowski, Mary Olson-Kromolowski, based on the play Modigliani by Dennis McIntyre
cast: Riccardo Scamarcio, Antonia Desplat, Al Pacino, Stephen Graham, Bruno Gouery, Ryan McPartland
Cinematography: Dariusz Wolski, Nicola Pecorini
Editing: Mark Davies
Music: Sacha Puttnam
Production design: Dave Warren
Producers: Barry Navidi, Johnny Depp, Andrea Ilverino, Monika Bacardi, Al Pacino
Production companies: Modi Productions Ltd (UK), IN.2 Film (UK)
Venue: San Sebastián International Film Festival (Official Selection)
In English, French
110 minutes
