John Maybury’s films take visual risks worth our attention, particularly when he depicts artists. We value his willingness to experiment, though the storytelling is not always strong enough to make those experiments work.
Fi1m perspective
The cutting in a John Maybury film can be fragmented; the pictures may take their cue from the artist being depicted. We value that willingness to find something other than the usual biographical explanation, though it can leave the story struggling to keep up. His early collaborations with Derek Jarman covered set design, costumes and editing, work that helps explain his attention to how images are assembled. Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies (1994) gave his experiments a feature-length, collage form.
Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), which he wrote and directed, brought those methods to his first narrative feature. Cinematography and design convey the artist’s world, although the grimness can make the portrait feel narrow despite strong central performances. His Hollywood debut, the time-travel thriller The Jacket (2005), made the weakness in plotting harder to overlook. The Edge of Love (2008), about Dylan Thomas, returned him to an artistic life, a subject that suits his habit of letting the pictures do much of the explaining.
Rome (2005) requires a different kind of judgement, since Maybury directed episodes within a shared production. Our score of 82 for the series is not a personal mark for him, and we would not attribute its successes or faults to him alone. We were grateful for Ray Stevenson’s warmth, which makes the brutal ancient society worth spending time in. The opening is uneven, and the plentiful cruelty remains a substantial qualification to our recommendation, but Stevenson gives us a reason to stay through the rougher stretches.
For a closer look at Maybury’s own methods, Love Is the Devil is the useful starting point, since he wrote as well as directed it. Expect the artist’s way of seeing to shape the film, and be prepared for a grim evening. Our firmer recommendation is Rome, provided the uneven opening does not send you away too soon.
Biography
John Maybury (born 25 March 1958) is an English filmmaker and artist. He first came to prominence directing music videos in the 1980s, including the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" (1984) and Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" (1990).
Maybury's feature films include Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), which he also wrote and which screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival; The Jacket (2005); and The Edge of Love (2008). He has directed episodes of television series including Rome (2005), The Borgias (2011) and Marco Polo (2014).
