Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon
Director: John Maybury
Year Released: 1998
Rating: 1.0
As a huge fan of Bacon's work - I get giddy when I happen upon his work while travelling and touring museums overseas (and was delighted to see his work in the MoMa) - I felt obligated to watch this biopic, which has the courtesy of not ending with Bacon's death, but rather the death of Bacon's troubled lover George (played here by pre-Bond Daniel Craig). Maybury expends all his energy trying to film this in BaconScope, with distorted faces and blurred sets mostly as a distraction - in order to replicate the artist's supposed 'mindset' - although it merely serves to barely cover up the barely-there storyline of a grouchy drunk with a taste for rough sex who meets a destitute crackpot. There are no insights into the creative process and no insights into Bacon - if anything, the documentary I watched on YouTube about him was more intriguing (Bacon was eloquent but, like every good artist, evasive).
