A movie still of Goldberg's character from (Untitled)
A group of business types are in deep reflection in front a painting of swirled pastels and circles. A sudden “ding!” sound reveals the group is actually just waiting for the elevator in the lobby of an office building. Outward appearances are deceiving in Jonathan Parker’s (Untitled), a satire turned serious film that feigns an honest critique about New York’s contemporary art scene.
From a reoccurring image of a plastic bag caught in the branches of a tree, to a taxidermy monkey with its face inside of a vacuum attachment, to the film’s plot and static characters, (Untitled) plays with today’s notion of how easily meaning gets applied to the meaningless.
(Untitled) mainly follows the consistent failures of the two opposite, yet similarly egotistical brothers; classically trained, pianist-turned-noise composer Adrian Jacobs (played by Adam Goldberg), and his older painter sibling Josh Jacobs (Eion Bailey) who achieves mediocre success.
Claiming as an obedient consumerist would, “ten thousand dollars a picture is genius,” the boys’ father along with one decorative art buyer favor Josh’s pleasant aesthetic paintings. Adrian’s “unwanted noise” compositions, consisting of a bizarre conglomeration of instruments such as; a piano, a clarinet, bubble wrap, kazoos, aluminum cans, broken glass, chains, vocal interjections, and a bucket, are according to Adrian, intentionally “not connected with life.” His egoist belief is that, “tonality and harmony are a capitalist ploy to sell pianos,” but the audience sees that his mundane, paying gig as a classical piano accompanist at restaurants and weddings is the motive behind his bitterness.
In the film, commercial art is defined by its effortless salability and mobility, but naive Josh believes, “what works is what people relate to . . . I’m fortunate my work crosses over.” Josh builds his ego around the ability to sell his repetitive, pastel color-schemed work, although his gallery-owner girlfriend Madeleine hides his work in her gallery’s back room.
Madeleine Gray (played by Mary Shelton) is the quintessential Greenwich Village, New York gallery owner. As fake and two-dimensional as her noisy, head-to-toe black vinyl outfit and skirts made of paper, she projects herself as the patron saint of contemporary art. She, unbeknownst to her boyfriend, falls for Adrian after witnessing one of his “emotionally bankrupt” compositions that mesh perfectly with her aesthetic (or lack thereof). With pretentious comments like, “artists need people with vision and no thought of financial return,” and “you can’t just walk into a gallery and buy the work, my collector’s buy art because they fall in love with it,” Madeleine prides herself on only representing “important emerging artists” who aren’t sellable, although she secretly performs quite the opposite act by selling boyfriend Josh’s work to the decorative art buyer to keep her gallery open.
One such emerging artist, the silk pajama, terrycloth robe, derby-wearing Ray (played by Vinnie Jones) is “proving process can be administrative,” a “reflection of our society,” according to Madeleine. His body of work consists of absurd, gaudy, decorated taxidermy sculptures of which he offers no hand in actually creating. Although he boasts, “I don’t make art that you have a spot for,” Madeleine arranges the work at her gallery to show that, “collectors can fit it in their apartments.”
Another memorable artist discovery of Madeleine’s named Monroe, is an extreme minimalist. His art labels, through a long and pensive process, are placed in arbitrary positions along the gallery wall amongst pushpins and crumpled pieces of paper. When asked about his inspiration he blankly replies, “If I could find what inspires me, it’d probably be . . . really inspiring.”
It’s downside after downside sprinkled with art-speak and tidbits of comic relief. The only realness to each character is their apparent lack of control-creatively or logically. It makes for a cast of outwardly interesting yet stubborn, empty, irritable characters who become predictable in their inability to grow or merely humble themselves from their unwavering egos. The movie itself is too pretentious for a non-art going audience. Maybe it’s the director’s quaff about today’s society, but it’s as hard to make sense of (Untitled) as it is to understand the Ray’s sculpture or Adrian’s music.
Adrian attends successful abstract noise composer Morton Cabot’s tribute concert, and gets some good advice from Cabot himself. The next scene cuts back to Adrian’s apartment, and the audience is given some false salvation as Adrian attempts to make more sense out of his nonsensical compositions. The bag caught in the tree outside his window reappears, with the bag freeing itself from the branches. Is it a symbol of real change, or is Parker fooling us with empty symbolism? It’s hard to tell, as Adrian doesn’t even perform for the remainder of the film.
