DALÍLAND -- Director Mary Harron and Actor Ben Kingsley Elevate a Mediocre Script

Review by Sean Boelman

Ben Kingsley and Chris Briney in DALILAND, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

There have been plenty of movies about Dalí’s life, so one might be wondering… do we really need another? With a director like Mary Harron (American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page) and a star like Ben Kingsley, the answer seemed to be yes. Unfortunately, Dalíland does not live up to its potential, offering a generally unmoving — if mostly well-made — recollection of his later years.

The film follows a young gallery assistant in the 1970s who gets the chance of a lifetime to work alongside the legendary artist Salvador Dalí as he prepares for what ends up being one of his final shows. As is the case with many biopics, although the movie addresses some of Dalí’s flaws, it largely glosses over them in favor of adulation.

As a result, John Walsh’s script fails to say anything particularly interesting about its subject, instead getting caught up in the “sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” of the whole situation. There is so much unexplored potential in the film, from the theme of aging in a creative field to the growing counterculture movement of the time, and yet the movie seems content with being insubstantial.

The continued debauchery in the film also grows somewhat wearisome after a while. Framing the story through the perspective of some boring white guy is also a detrimental choice. The portions of the movie in which the aging Dalí, whose life is beginning to slip away from him, reflects on his legacy and what he has done are far more interesting than anything the gallery assistant does.

Ben Kingsley in DALILAND, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Given that the film is about one of the most iconic visual artists of all time, one would expect no less than a visually splendid movie from Dalíland. Thankfully, cinematographer Marcel Zyskind does an excellent job shooting the film, and the design team wonderfully recreates the off-kilter past for the movie to take place in.

The main reason to see this film, though, is Kingsley’s performance as the iconically eccentric artist. It definitely feels more as if Kingsley is doing an impersonation rather than truly playing the role, but he has such a command of the screen and his craft that it’s hard not to be fully entranced by his turn.

That being said, the rest of the cast pales in comparison to Kingsley. Christopher Briney plays the audience surrogate and has the personality of wet cement. The talented Suki Waterhouse is absolutely wasted here. Perhaps most frustratingly, Ezra Miller also shows up in a brief role — their minimal screen time consisting entirely of flashbacks that easily could have been cut in their entirety.

The talents of director Mary Harron and actor Ben Kingsley keep Dalíland watchable, even if John Walsh’s painfully dull script does it absolutely no favors. There are plenty of other movies to watch about the iconic artist, and your time would be better spent watching one of those.

Dalíland hits theaters and VOD on June 9.

​Rating: 3/5