Kent Jones, qualified in many ways in the art of cinema, visited Sodankylä in 2019, when we screened his fiction feature debut Diane, an unassuming but warm film about aging people in rural America. Its’ successor Late Fame is at least as wonderful, starring the incomparable Willem Dafoe.
It is based on the Viennese author Arthur Schnitzler’s novel from 1895. His works have also inspired Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), but especially Max Ophüls. Jones and his screenwriting partner Samy Burch (who was nominated for an Oscar for the film May December, 2023) have relocated the events perfectly to their home turf, modern day New York.
Dafoe brings his usual quiet charisma for the role of Ed Saxburger, a promising poet in the 1970s but a forgotten and lonely post office worker nowadays. He is suddenly ”found” by a group of rich, poetlike young people – and their star Gloria (Greta Lee from Past Lives), also distinguishing herself as a singer. Late Fame is full of local charm, but even when depicting the changing of eras and getting older, the film never crumbles into false nostalgia. Creativity, reputation, fame – what do they mean when the diffences between generations and classes remain? (TM)
KENT JONES (s. 1964), a versatile figure in film culture, has distinguished himself as a critic for, among others, Film Comment (focusing on Kazakh cinema), and as a writer known for his books on film – on Robert Bresson among others. He has served as a director of the renowned New York City Film Festival, The Film Society of Lincoln Center and of the World Cinema Project, which aims to restore and distribute rare and lost gems of cinema. Jones has directed a superb documentary portrait Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015), and with Martin Scorsese he has directed A Letter to Elia (on Elia Kazan, 2010) and co-written My Voyage to Italy (on Italian cinema, 1999). Jones and Scorsese have also written a script, The Life of Jesus, waiting to come to life.
Timo Malmi