A temperamental and very intimate film portrait of the Scottish artist premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
That this is no conventional artist documentary becomes clear after just a few minutes. Douglas Gordon sits in his studio, gold dust on his weathered face, thick silver chains around his neck, and asks the director directly into the camera what the film should actually be called. He then immediately provides the answer himself: "Portrait of a Perilous Character" he writes on the kitchen wall. "If that's not the title, you can forget the whole thing!" he threatens the filmmaker. Not a polished artistic statement, but a blunt declaration intended to make it clear who's in charge.
Fortunately, director Finlay Pretsell wasn't deterred by such provocations. He has thus succeeded in creating a surprisingly subjective, at times confrontational, and painfully intimate portrait of the artist, one that breaks with many conventions of the genre. Here, life and career milestones aren't simply ticked off – after all, there's Wikipedia for that. Nor is the artist celebrated as a myth-shrouded master, his brilliant works filmed like in Wim Wenders' biopic Anselm. Das Rauschen der Zeit. Most of the film takes place in Gordon's studio. It's neither the size of an airplane hangar nor as immaculately tidy as Anselm Kiefer's. Instead, we get to watch the temperamental Scottish artist experimenting and philosophizing wildly. Occasionally, we also see him shaving.
It's exciting, unsettling, and sometimes even a little embarrassing. In his Berlin factory loft, Gordon first burns a T-shirt with a feminist message and then slips the charred remains over his head. He shatters lightbulbs on a mirrored surface, sprinkles gold dust into the spotlight, blows soap bubbles into the air, and has his earlobe tattooed black. Whether this is performance art or just the usual warm-up exercises remains unclear. In any case, Gordon skillfully slips into the role of the flamboyant, gender-fluid artist type in front of the camera. Only to question this image a little later. He says it annoys him that artists are always portrayed as crazy and exotic, wipes the gold dust from his face, and sings a Scottish folk song in a touchingly beautiful voice.
As someone deeply involved with film and photography, Douglas Gordon knows exactly how iconic images are created. And how they can be artistically instrumentalized. In 24 Hour Psycho, perhaps his best-known work, for which he won the Turner Prize, he stretched Alfred Hitchcock's thriller classic Psycho through extreme slow motion, into a running time of 24 hours. In his video Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, which premiered in Cannes, he dissected every tiny movement of football star Zinédine Zidane, right up to his infamous headbutt that catapulted him out of the 2006 World Cup.
It's all the more surprising, then, that Gordon's greatest artistic achievements aren't discussed in great detail. Instead, he prefers to talk about his family, his dreams and fears, aging and death. The true sensation of this film lies in how unguarded he is, how vulnerable he appears in front of the camera, the unexpected turns he takes, the contradictions he finds himself entangled in, and the spontaneous insights that come to him. At times, the conversations are more reminiscent of psychoanalytic sessions than a film interview. Then again, when his speech becomes sluggish and the pauses grow longer, one wonders if perhaps a few too many beers or other drugs were involved.
At one point, Gordon even throws the camera crew out in a pretty rude manner. This scene, along with the many outrageous voice messages he left on the director's answering machine, makes it into the final film. This gives the project an extra touch of cinéma vérité. And it's also quite funny. In times when artist biographies are curated like lifestyle magazines, every sound bite is checked, every interview is edited and polished countless times, this prickly beast of a documentary feels all the more refreshing. It's also remarkably bold and self-assured for a filmmaker who previously made documentaries about extreme athletes. In the end, Douglas Gordon even had to forgo his desired title. Douglas Gordon By Douglas Gordon is simply a more fitting description.
