The satirical horror movie Velvet Buzzsaw explores what happens when the pretentious
world of modern art collides with a collection of supernaturally-charged paintings from a
dead artist with a dark and horrific past.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this video I'm explaining everything you need
to know about Velvet Buzzsaw, the movie's ending and what each of the kills represents.
Plus I'll be delving into who Vetril Dease really is and how his supernatural art comes
to life.
As you'd expect, spoilers ahead for the movie, so take care if you haven't seen it yet.
When ambitious assistant Josephina stumbles across the dark, creepy art of dead painter
Vetril Dease, her decision to commercialise the work that the painter wanted to destroy
kicks off a series of escalating horrific deaths.
As Josephina looks at one of his portraits, the ashes of paintings that Dease was burning
before he died, re-ignite, the first indication of the supernatural forces inside his art.
The eyes on this portrait also seem to shift slightly from the centre to the side looking
at Josephina as she unravels and examines more paintings inside the dead artist's apartment.
Those watching eyes are a spine-chilling premonition of what's to come for many of the characters
in the movie.
Eyes often show up shortly before a character dies, as if they're observing and making a
moral judgement.
Just after gallery owner Rhodora reveals to Josephina that she's deliberately removing
many of Dease's works from the market in order to create scarcity and drive up the value,
the eyes on a wall watch Bryson who's been tasked with hiding the art and who opens up
a crate removing some of the paintings presumably to keep for himself.
Bryson, of course, ends up dead shortly after at the hands of some painted monkey mechanics.
Just before Gretchen's deadly encounter with the sphere, the blurred eyes of the boy and
girl in this portrait come into focus.
It's as if Dease's spirit is awakening in the painting and is about to pass deadly judgement
on Gretchen for how she's abandoned the principles of her former position as a museum curator
to make money and deliberately gain special access and favours for private clients.
Likewise, the eyes in a sinister doll open up to watch gallery owner Jon just before
he's strangled by an installation in his gallery.
And after Josephina ditches Damrish when he decides to go back to his art collective,
there's an especially creepy eye on the graffitied wall behind her looking right at her.
The mural comes alive setting a spectacular trap for her as a gallery full of graffiti
art opens up behind the wall.
Josephina's death seems particularly appropriate as the paint from the art that she so despises
melts, runs towards her and then consumes her.
And, after she's killed we see she's been incorporated directly into the graffitied
wall.
What's going on with each death is that each victim ends up becoming part of the deadly
artwork.
Bryson was pulled into the painting of the monkey mechanics, and the sphere consumed
Gretchen's arm and her dead body was assumed by most people to be just another part of
the art installation.
Remember that the archivist who was studying Dease's paintings for Rhodora discovered there
was blood tissue in every one of the works she studied.
She assumed the blood belonged to Dease, and that seems quite plausible because in one
of the flashbacks, there's a bowl full of blood with a bloodied knife and razor next
to it, and we also see a glimpse of Dease painting with a hand partially wrapped in
a bandage of sorts and what looks like cuts or wounds around his wrists.
Writer-director Dan Gilroy has talked about how one of the themes of Velvet Buzzsaw is
"the idea that artists invest their spirit into their art."
It seems as if by literally painting his own flesh and blood into his works, Dease has
invested them with a supernatural spirit.
While the characters in the film are all desperately trying to take advantage of Dease's artwork
and exploit his life and everything he lived through for their own gain, what they don't
realise, as Daveed Diggs, who plays Damrish, has said, "is that Dease's past and the violence
he lived will actually reach out and kill you."
If new victims like Josephina and Bryson end up becoming part of the art which killed them,
then perhaps it's also possible that some of Dease's paintings contain blood tissue
from his previous victims.
For example we learn in the movie that as an adult Dease tracked his abusive father,
tortured him and burned him alive, but what if Dease painted parts of his father into
some of his paintings as well?
Now, we need to talk about Rhodora and the importance of her tattoo "Velvet Buzzsaw"
which carries a lot of meaning especially as it's also the movie's title.
First of all, it's the name of the punk rock duo Rhodora formed with her friend Polly Anna.
Damrish tells Rhodora he was a fan of their early work, but the pair eventually split
up.
What matters though is that Rhodora abandoned her original passion and anarchic roots and
decided instead to become part of the status quo, building a career as a well-known dealer
in the moneyed and powerful world of art.
As she's built her status in the art world, Rhodora's learned how to trick and manipulate
artists, buyers and rivals alike.
She understands how to pick up promising new talent like Damrish for her gallery while
simultaneously offloading talent like Piers who's no longer productive onto her rival
Dondon.
Rhodora also manoeuvres Josephina into partnering with her to sell the stolen Dease paintings,
and in the past she's manipulated Morf behind his back by using his boyfriend for inside
information.
Her smarts almost seem to get her through to the end of the film unscathed as she realises
just how dangerous Dease's paintings really are and she empties her house of any art or
images.
However, Dease's spirit still finds a way to enact revenge on her for stealing his work,
and the "Velvet Buzzsaw" tattoo on her neck springs to life slicing her to death while
she's in a pose which mirrors the art previously on her bedroom wall.
Ultimately, as Rhodora herself said, "art is always dangerous"; and the "no death, no
art" tattoo on her arm is, of course, particularly fitting for both her and the movie.
The name "Velvet Buzzsaw" is also an interesting oxymoron as it implies something soft and
luxurious but sharp and deadly at the same time.
It applies to Rhodora and how she softly, softly manipulates people around her while
also using more cutting methods to get what she wants, for example, threats of legal action
to force Josephina into sharing ownership of Dease's art; and remember that Damrish
says he was specifically warned to be careful of Rhodora.
The name Velvet Buzzsaw also applies to the lethal threat that a seemingly innocent piece
of art can pose.
Velvet Buzzsaw is clearly a pointed critique of the contemporary art world and the pretentious
critic Morf certainly isn't spared as he ends up dead at the hands of Hobo Man, the walking,
talking homeless superhero that Morf was so willing to critically tear apart at the beginning
of the movie.
I wonder whether the inclusion of this particular artwork of a down-on-his-luck, former superhero
is not only a comment on the changing nature of what's popular or in when it comes to the
art world, but also a reference to how one of the most popular genres in current film
and TV entertainment, the superhero franchise, will eventually, like other genres before
it, fall out of the great favour it's currently in.
Gilroy also appears to think that critics can be too fast to point out faults and criticise
the work an artist may have poured their heart and soul into.
There's also some interesting commentary on whether too much value is given to the opinion
of a critic.
In the film, Rhodora says Morf "is a god" in their world, and when he decides to publish
his negative review of Hobo Man, it kills the sale of the piece that was brokered before
the review ran.
Morf is occasionally presented a little more positively than some of the other characters,
such as when he turns down Gretchen's proposal to feed her early information about his reviews.
However, he demonstrates he's more than willing to sacrifice any principles he may have if
it's expedient for him to do so or to cater to his own prejudices.
For example, he gives a negative review to Ricky's art show even though he liked it,
because he was sleeping with Josephina at the time and she asked him to make her ex-boyfriend
Ricky suffer.
And when Morf discovers Damrish is sleeping with Josephina, he yells "The admiration I
had for your work has completely evaporated!"
He's also ridiculously fussy and snobbish, complaining about cheesy funeral music; and
although he warns Rhodora that Dease's work is dangerous and to "stop selling it, box
it up and get rid of it", we see that he's kept some of it for himself and is going to
lock it away in storage, presumably to sell on in the future for a huge profit.
That moment is, of course, his ultimate undoing because that's when he comes face to face
with Hobo Man who he disparaged so savagely at the beginning of the film.
Ultimately then, the characters who die in Velvet Buzzsaw receive a death that parallels
how they've behaved.
Morf is literally torn apart by the thing which he figuratively tore to shreds earlier,
and as the movie's producer Jennifer Fox says, Josephina "is consumed by the graffiti art
she rejected and Rhodora by selling out her punk roots […] Bryson is killed by acting
on his primitive nature [and] Gretchen for over reaching."
So, why are some characters not targeted by Dease's supernatural creations and survive
to the end of the movie?
It seems that Gilroy may view Coco, Damrish and Piers as relatively innocent in comparison
to the others and therefore perhaps worthy of being spared the wrath of Dease.
Coco, played by Natalia Dyer who many of you'll know from Stranger Things, is too new to the
art scene to have been completely corrupted.
As an outsider who's only just joining that world, she's still clear-headed enough to
understand what isn't art.
For example, after Gretchen bleeds to death from having her arm sliced off by the Sphere,
Coco's the only person who can recognise that a dead body sprawled on the floor isn't actually
a piece of art.
As artists themselves, John Malkovich's Piers and Daveed Diggs's Damrish seem to understand
the underlying power of Dease's art.
Piers and Damrish both become mesmerised by Dease's paintings and this seems to be the
trigger that leads Damrish to abandon Rhodora's gallery and go back to his Collective, much
to Josephina's disgust.
Piers also goes back to creating art purely for himself, making sand drawings that the
tide gradually washes away as the credits roll.
Interestingly enough, that scene was inspired by Dan Gilroy's own experiences in the 1990s
writing the movie Superman Lives, starring Nic Cage and directed by Tim Burton.
When he found out the movie was being canned after 18 months of work, Gilroy told EW that
he went down to the beach and thought about how nothing he wrote was ever going to be
seen and so he "might as well come down and write words in the sand and have the waves
just wash them away."
But that was also the day that Gilroy decided to value what he creates not for how many
people see it or its commercial success, but simply for himself.
However you feel about the movie, Velvet Buzzsaw is more than just a horror film set in the
contemporary art world.
It's also a commentary about our relationship with any art form, including movies and TV.
Velvet Buzzsaw's producer Fox has said it's "about the commodification of art […] and
the way in which this self-selecting group of curators and dealers […] is anointing
certain people, ignoring other people, and [...] creating a false economy."
Gilroy has also said "art can't really exist without somebody paying for it, but once art
becomes monetized, it loses something.
[And] the problem when you over-monetize 'Art,' it becomes an object rather than something
imbued with a spirit, or an idea, or even a soul."
Which is why there's that line in the movie where Josephina says "what's the point of
art if nobody sees it?"
The film itself suggests that it's only the artists who realise the true value of art,
as both Damrish and Piers reject the over-commoditised art scene and return to their artistic roots.
This whole idea of the point of art and who sees it is also interesting because although
Velvet Buzzsaw premiered at the Utah-based indie film festival Sundance, the movie is
available on the global streaming service Netflix, which means a lot more people will
likely see this film than if it were only released in cinemas.
As for writer-director Dan Gilroy, he has various ambitions for the film: obviously,
he wants people to see and enjoy the movie, but he also wants it to spark conversations
and ideas.
On top of that, he told Vanity Fair that he hopes "people look at art in a slightly different
way. [... and that they] realize the artists have invested [...] their creative soul into
the work."
And finally, he'd like the movie "to do for the art world what Jaws did for swimming."
In other words, "When walking into a gallery of art, one should fear what might happen..."
After all, what about all those Dease paintings that have found their way into the hands of
street vendors selling them for five bucks a piece?
Will Dease be ok with this as the works are in the hands of the people now rather than
in the privileged art scene?
Or will he move on from taking revenge on the hypocritical art world to judging the
everyday hypocrisy of ordinary people?
So, what do you think of Velvet Buzzsaw?
And what did you take away from the movie?
Let me know in the comments below.
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