MIFF Movie Review: ‘Daliland’ is about Dali’s journey down spiraling madness, J.P. Devine writes

In a scene from “Daliland,” from left are Barbara Sukowa, Ben Kingsley and Andreja Pejic. Maine Film Center photo

This year’s Maine International Film Festival Mid-Life Achievement Award honoree Mary Harron (“American Psycho,” “I Shot Andy Warhol”) brings us “Daliland,” a wonderful fantasy portrait of the most fabulous, crazy character in the world of art, Salvador Dali.

You probably know little or nothing of Dali but for his most famous painting, “The Persistence of Memory” (1931), with its melting clocks. I was beginning my life in New York at the Art Institute when I first saw it, and I was captivated.

We read that most of Dali’s art, lots of it, won’t be seen in Harron’s film because she was unable to pick up the “necessary permissions.”

It doesn’t matter. Harron’s “Daliland” is about Dali’s journey down the spiraling madness of his last years, and you won’t care about the unseen art because what this woman has is a cinematic throw pillow of all the demons and angels that flowed out of the wine- and drug-addled mind of one art’s most interesting artists.

It begins in the ’70s, when Dali was famous for his cartoonish mustache, and folds back into when we meet Gala, his not-so-suffering wife (Barbara Sukowa), and a circus of New York’s beautiful and strange people who hung like a collection of Christmas ornaments on the dying tree called Dali.

A strange and allegedly fabricated player who works himself into this world is James (Christopher Briney), a young bisexual gallery assistant whom Dali comes to dub Saint Sebastian.

Allow me to save you some time. Once you’re drawn into viewing Harron’s cinematic kaleidoscopic world of “Daliland,” you will begin to draw away from the human zoo of New York’s bizarre street characters, beautifully drawn as they are by Harron’s gifted hand, and allow yourself to be transported into the work of one of the film world’s most gifted actors, and that’s really why you’re here.

Ben Kingsley is the gift of the art of acting that keeps on giving. He gave us a Gandhi that took our breath away and kept on doing that into the rest of his career.

Here in Harron’s quirky dance of light and darkness, he becomes Salvador Dali, and for a small bit of change you get to watch him work his magic. There is a lot of fun and craziness to see here, but keep your eye on Kingsley. You’re welcome.

“Daliland” will be screened at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 16, at the Waterville Opera House as part of the Maine International Film Festival.

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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