The Burnt Orange Heresy

The Burnt Orange Heresy feels like it wants to do for painting what The Ninth Gate did for books. The problem is that there were books in Polanski’s film, and not just mere props, but objets d'art in their own right. In contrast, there’s precious little painting in this movie; in fact, there’s literally less than meets the eye.

James Figueras (Claes Bang) is nominally an art critic, but sounds more like a shill. He has written a book called The Power of the Critic, and gives lectures about, well, the power of the critic. In one such lecture he resorts to "an oratorical gesture": a cock-and-bull story about a tortured Norwegian artists who, haunted by the portraits of Nazi officers he was forced to paint in a concentration camp, swore never to touch a brush again and took up finger painting.

The anecdote is so far-fetched that we know it to be a crock five seconds before James admits as much, but the point is that "because of what I, as a critic and an expert, have shared with you ... I have shaped your experience of this painting ... I single-handedly made you believe that this [a non-descript painting that James himself "slapped down without any real care or inspiration"] was a masterpiece."

Now, all James did was appeal to his audience’s emotions. His spiel, made up or not, provided no objective insight, no "expert" opinion. Wouldn’t his case for the power of the critic have been more convincing if he had produced in-depth arguments on technique, style, composition, etc., instead of feeding his listeners a sob story whose power lies in the telling and not in the teller, thus rendering James’s status as art critic moot? Perhaps he should have titled his book The Power of Rhetoric.

Having said all that, it’s safe to say that James is actually meant to be a hack (no problem there; my beef is with how transparent of a hack he is). That talking up one’s own sense of power is a sign of weakness is a irony that’s lost on the character, but not necessarily on...