Art School Space

It doesn't take very much exposure to the arts for one to develop all kinds of wild notions of just what the hell it is that goes on in art school. Surely, most of us have had our sense of aesthetics and taste violated and molested by some piece of tripe flung limply at us from straight out of left, failing to go the distance and instead of landing solidly in our grasp, drops short, splatters, makes a huge mess, takes a bad hop, and beans us squarely on the temple.

Coming to and nursing our wounds, we can only wonder. Why? WHY???

And then... HOW?

Art School Confidential (the film) doesn't answer this, and in many ways, I don't think any of us expect it to. I was hoping simply for therapy of the sort 'Office Space' offered to white collar cube-dwellers everywhere. Office Space didn't just expose the evils of corporate platitudes and politeness, it gave us *coping* strategies. All other countermeasures exhausted, we could retreat into safety by putting the vapid, blithely ignorant boss into the Lumberg slot, the infuriatingly chipper co-worker either into the 'case-of-the-Mondays' woman or that tool with all the flare from Chotchkie's(1). We'd then chuckle a bit with the co-workers that understood and found it in ourselves to slog through the rest of the day.(2)

Confidential offers no such retreat. When(3) you again find yourself stuck in an overlong, plodding 'art' film or mediocre gallery exhibition, you won't have acquired any comic archetypes to cling to while you sip on your smuggled-in flask or overpriced glass of Merlot.

From an environment rich with eccentrics and inflated egos and what I'm told is brilliant source material, Confidential takes on the style of the conventional college coming-of-age comedy complete with dopey romance, slacker cohort/guru-figure, sublimely-perfect aryan villain figure, and occasional interjections by the world-weary faculty by equal parts accomplished and mediocre.

Much like Office Space, Confidential seems to split into two films. You'll really find the parallels striking. The First half sets up the satire. The second half switches gears and becomes something of a caper flick, methodically tying up all the loose ends and adding a lot of uncharacteristic action.

Given the spectacular disconnect that can occur between artist and audience in some projects, the satire is incredibly unsatisfying. There are freaks spouting pretentious, half-baked bullshit, of course, but not enough and not to the degree that we can believe that these are the same people that have inflicted such suffering upon us in theaters and galleries across the country.

Oddly enough, I'm left admiring somewhat the abrupt switch to the caper mode in the second half. While parts seem out of character for this kind of film, there's a cynicism underlying it that rings true and deserved deeper exploration for the kind of darkly comic take that the overall movie would've benefited from.

The cast does fine, but it really would've worked better as an ensemble presentation than focusing on a few central characters. Malkovich stands out, as well he should. The rest of the cast doesn't really offend either, and overall the film seems competently made. I'm just left stumped at how a movie could make art school students boring in comparison to office workers.

(1) Even writing this down now, I'm compelled to reach out and strangle a small rodent or something when I think of the guy.
(2) Comforting, but not necessarily a healthy thing. As many have observed, the irony of the sort that office humor sources like Dilbert and, alas, Office Space mine may indeed be the kind raw resource that the proverbial /Man/ needs to help keep us all placated enough not to affect actual change. Basically, if taping up a Dilbert strip about some grave corporate injustice that mirrors your own or quoting Office Space behind your manager's back satisfies your sense of insurgency, who's really benefiting? It's not entirely a rhetorical question.
(3) Not 'if'.