Art School Confidential

Impressions before seeing it
I just wanted to see this movie for its title. Not a lot of movies about art school.

How was it?
Art School Confidential is like a painting: at first you only see the image on the surface, but if you watch the whole movie you will be surprised by a deeper meaning. It does start off like a typical college comedy and starts setting up romantic potential, preparing you for that kind of movie, but then it takes a more serious turn and pulls out some insightful commentary on things like success, creativity, and fame. Some of the more interesting scenes, for me, were the ones in the classroom when the art students were critiquing each others artwork. The main character, Jerome (Max Minghella), is a talented artist but the other students either ignore his work or bash it because, as good as he is at realism, his work is also "inside the box". On the other hand, everyone praises the work of Jonah (Matt Keeslar) for its simplicity and lack of adherence to any rules or conventions of artistic design - "It's like he's never seen another painting before", one student says in awe. In a subplot, one of Jerome's roommates (Ethan Suplee) is attempting to make a movie about the campus strangler but keeps getting stuck, so the beatnik girl suggests that he stop trying to make it like every other movie.

So what is art, then? Is this movie saying that art is not allowed to be conventional? Jerome knows he has talent and spends much of the movie frustrated that nobody else is acknowledging it (something I'm sure every artist goes through at some point), but does that mean that everybody else is wrong? I think it goes back to the old saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", and that is why they had Jerome fall in love with the art model (Sophia Myles). She poses nude for the class, but he draws her portrait from the shoulders up, suggesting a more intimate and respectful portrayal of beauty that she doesn't fully understand until the end of the movie. All of the budding artists at the art school have a certain pretentiousness stemming from their own preconceived notions of what art should be, but Jerome seems to be the only one who understands that real life is art, too, and that's why his style is realism. I also kind of liked the sad but true implications that fame and popularity do not necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with talent (Lord knows Paris Hilton is a perfect example of that), but I suppose the ending is a happy one. Jerome did say that he wanted to be a famous artist, but he didn't say that he wanted his art to be famous, or even good.

Recommendation
I think it's a must see for anyone with an interest in art and the art business, because it has more to say about those things than one might think. Don't expect a raunchy college sex comedy like Van Wilder, because this isn't that. The reviews were mixed on this movie, but I really liked it thanks to my interest in art and creativity, and I found that the storylines did ultimately fit together, even if others didn't think so.