There have been some great films about painters — say, the documentary The Mystery of Picasso (1956) or Robert Altman’s entry in the Van Gogh biopic subgenre, Vincent & Theo (1990) — but by and large, the excitement of watching someone apply paint onto a canvas is more theoretical than actual. It is not for nothing that people fall asleep while watching Bob Ross reruns.
This proves especially true in the lamentable case of the new Steven Soderbergh movie The Christophers. Here, we are presented not merely with a painter as a protagonist but a particular painter-protagonist whose inspiration, relevance, and even productivity have long expired. Played by Ian McKellen, British artist Julian Sklar was most recently in the public eye as a panelist on a British art-themed reality show called Art Fight — think American Idol, but with the contestants bearing canvases rather than microphones — and he has even taken to selling his work at fairs rather than through galleries.
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What’s more, the movie is not even about what Julian is working on in the present. Instead, the entire plot in Ed Solomon’s script turns on a mysterious lot of never-finished portraits by Julian of someone called Christopher — hence the application of the article “The” in the title The Christophers. Years ago, Julian hastily abandoned the series, but they are now considered sufficiently valuable by his uncouth, estate-minded children (played by Jessica Gunning and, unaccountably, former talk-show host James Corden) to involve the services of Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), who advertises herself as a painting restorer, pays the bills by working at a food truck, and may, in fact, be a forger.
If you think that a tale of missing or forged art sounds more thrilling than the average movie set in the world of art, well, then you haven’t seen The Christophers. In years — or, more precisely, decades — past, Soderbergh was considered a master practitioner of the tersely plotted, crisply directed heist film, including Out of Sight (1998) and the first three Ocean’s films. Here, though, his skills have abandoned him, or, at least, his budget has. After the Sklar children persuade Lori to turn up as their father’s new assistant with the intention of finishing the Christopher portraits — to be sold, after his looming death, for their profit — we might expect knottily satisfying plot turns.
Instead, it soon becomes obvious that most of the film will take place in Sklar’s residence, and that most of the scenes will consist of extended duologues between Sklar and Lori. McKellen is reasonably amusing in the early going: He is seen recording online messages to fans (who pay more if they wish him to “sign” — with a hand motion — his greetings). McKellen leans hard into the image of the dissipated, senescent artist, as when, upon meeting Lori, he asks if she would like a drink and then proceeds to tell her to go downstairs to fetch one. Also diverting is when Sklar complains to Lori about his Wikipedia page, which, he says in his usual pedantic manner, includes both quotes taken out of context and those he uttered “in a state of inebriation.”
Yet McKellen’s comic performance merely papers, or paints, over the fact that the main action never really takes off. Although Lori is under orders to finish the Christopher portraits by adopting his artistic aesthetic, Sklar quickly becomes wise to her plans. The suspense goes right out the window. He then demands that the paintings be obliterated, though this never really happens. Instead, the film, like its protagonist, dodders: At one point, Sklar wants Lori to finish them in an intentionally bad manner — perhaps to deprive his offspring of their inheritance — while at another, he becomes involved in finishing them himself in a spirit that honors their subject (a former lover of the McKellen character). In his best films — Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Out of Sight, The Limey (1999) — Soderbergh can be the most acerbic of filmmakers, but in The Christophers, he becomes bogged down in some very soggy notions about art and artists, and the film’s lone attempt at a hipper reference — that the Sklar spawn have pre-sold the Christopher paintings to a billionaire “tech bro” — is almost completely undeveloped.
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Never before has a film attempted to sustain interest on the basis of whether some so-so paintings will or will not cease to exist, and one can see why. The film trudges forward with scene after scene of Sklar and Lori talking, arguing, and, occasionally, painting. Things get even worse when Sklar dies — apparently while painting a self-portrait for Lori, a particularly treacly touch — and we are left with several eleventh-hour plot reversals involving Lori, a “new” batch of Christopher portraits, and a forged document that results in those Christophers falling out of the family. Pardon me for saying that none of these twists are as compelling as the various scheming in the Ocean’s movies. The movie asks us to take seriously Lori’s posthumous tribute to Sklar, one of those insufferable “video installations” one sometimes finds in university exhibition spaces — in this case, a room featuring numerous video monitors of Sklar talking. Above all, it’s simply boring — about as invigorating as listening to an episode of NPR’s Weekend Edition.
Although the movie loses whatever interest it has when McKellen leaves the scene, in one way, his character’s death is deeply relatable: He has entered heavenly rest that resembles the state of rest most will have entered by the time the credits roll.
Peter Tonguette is the Life & Arts editor for the Washington Examiner magazine.
