No. No! Just, no.

by Adam Hirsch

All the reasons — both good and bad — that Lindsay Lohan has become a public figure are more or less irrelevant today. She’s Lindsay, she’s inarguably part of the Zeitgeist, and she’s more than likely here to stay.

Oh, and she’s just made the worst film. Ever. The title: ”Lindsay Lohan, Transformed”.

She’s teamed up with the painter Richard Phillips and made a two-minute clusterfuck of narcissism and plagiarism to be shown for — wait for it — the “Commercial Break” visual art section of the 54th Venice Biennale.

 

 

(In the event it gets taken down from YouTube, you can also watch it here.)

In case anyone is, I don’t know, a little curious about why this film is so aesthetically pleasing, the answer is simple: the majority of shots from this thing has been appropriated from Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona.

Check it.

 

 

 

 

The turtlenecks! She even stole the black turtlenecks!

Celebrities can make really interesting art films. James Franco, God bless him, is trying his heart out with his stuff, and Kanye West’s short film of Runaway was brilliant.

But this … bastard child of Bergman and Lohan just feels wrong. It feels like you’re being bathed in styrofoam. It is a non-filmmaker/world class narcissist taking one of the greatest films ever made and making it about them. Appropriation is a part of art, this is a given. Dammit though! The two defenses of this rip-off are both pathetic. 1.) “No one’s ever gonna realize it’s from Persona;“ and 2.) “I think it really means something and is cool that we, you know, gave homage to Ingmar Bergman and I think, you know, that it can only add on to his legacy.”

Am I wrong here?  Is this actually a piece that has gone over my head, or the dragging Bergman’s body through the handbag section of Bergdorf’s as I suspect?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2011 at 5:28 pm. It is filed under Adam, blog, writing and tagged with Ingmar Bergman, Lindsay Lohan, Persona, Transformed, Venice Biennale.