Basquiat Critic Reviews

Most movies stress the agony of art (think of Kirk Douglas' Van Gogh in "Lust for Life"). Schnabel's exceptional film honors his friend by showing the act of creation as a natural high.Read the full review

The New York art world quickly makes Basquiat a star. His work is good (when you see it in the movie, you can feel why people liked it so much), but his story is better: from a cardboard box to a gallery opening!Read the full review

Basquiat is an engrossing spectacle, but by the end, as a zoned-out Basquiat stands regally in a cruising Jeep, we realize that Schnabel has reconfigured his story as a kind of ghostly myth, and that we've never completely seen the man behind it.Read the full review

It's smart and good-hearted and boasts an amazingly good score, but the film is limited by the very private nature of the man it portrays.Read the full review

As writer and director, Schnabel should be commended for avoiding Hollywood's biopic cliches about artists, as Basquiat's meteoric rise to fame and tragic death at the age of 27 would have fit perfectly the timeworn formula.Read the full review

But the film, written and directed by fellow artist Julian Schnabel, is so tender in its affections, these omissions and poetic licenses seem like the embellishments of a good friend.Read the full review

The movie meanders without a rudimentary sense of the dramatic, yet it remains intermittently interesting thanks to a surprisingly voluminous cast of usual suspects from the world of independent cinema. [14 Aug 1996 Pg.09.D]Read the full review

According to Schnabel, the movie is intended to celebrate the man's life, not to mourn his death, so Basquiat's last days are not shown. It's one of many miscalculations made by the director, because, when the end credits roll, we're left without a sense of closure.Read the full review

But the film's central figure remains a cipher, the subject of a colorful scrapbook rather than a revealing portrait.Read the full review