Motion pictures about static images: Hollywood takes on art

"The Agony And The Ecstasy" begins with a 12-minute documentary-style lecture about Michelangelo and his work, which gives a sense of the film's tell-don't-show style. Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II spends most of the film frustrated by the slow pace of Charlton Heston's Michelangelo as he paints the Sistine Chapel, and audiences might also be frustrated in the 138 minutes of the film. It looks great, as the film got five Oscar nominations, including Art Direction. As for Heston, let's just say no one would accuse him of under-acting.

"My Left Foot" is the story of Christy Brown, an Irish painter, poet, novelist and autobiographer who had such severe cerebral palsy that he could only control his left foot. Daniel Day-Lewis won his first Best Actor Oscar for his performance, a sympathetic but unflinching portrait of Brown, who loves whiskey almost as much as he loves art. It's also surprisingly funny for a dark subject, like the scene where young Christy is playing soccer with his friends and using his head to stop the ball, or when adult Christy tries to distract his nurse so he can secretly drink whiskey through a hidden straw. Brown eventually displays his art at a gallery and writes his autobiography, but the art itself is secondary to how it lets Brown defy his body and reach out to the world.

After his father gave him a copy of Jackson Pollock's biography, Ed Harris spent 10 years trying to make "Pollock." Not only did Harris direct the biopic and star in it, he also did all the Pollock paintings that are shown in the film and gained 30 pounds and a beard during a six-week hiatus in filming. The movie doesn't so much show us Pollock, who struggles with severe alcoholism most of the time, but it really shows the process of creating the art, like when he discovers drip painting. Marcia Gay Harden won an Oscar for playing Lee Krasner, abstract expressionist painter and Pollock's wife.

Julian Schnabel's "Basquiat" is the first commercial film about a painter that was made by a painter. The biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the New York graffiti artist and painter, was directed and co-written by Schnabel, who also inserts a Schnabel surrogate in Gary Oldman's "Albert Milo" character. Schnabel had to create fake Basquiats for the film, since the artist's estate didn't grant permission for the real work to be used. Basquiat's journey from sleeping in parks to reaching the peak of New York's art world is interesting, but the highlight is seeing David Bowie playing Andy Warhol.

Camille Claudel was a French sculptor who was also the muse, lover and occasional model for sculptor Auguste Rodin. Isabella Adjani produced the biopic about her and starred as Claudel, earning herself an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. We don't see much of Claudel's sculpture in this film, only her intensity and passion, both for art and for Rodin. As is a common theme in these stories, creating is often the thing keeping artists from — or sometimes driving them toward — insanity.

Robert Altman's "Vincent & Theo," starring Tim Roth as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Rhys as his brother Theo, starts with actual footage of a Van Gogh painting selling for millions of pounds in 1987. For the rest of the film, and indeed his whole life, Vincent struggles to sell a single painting, even with Theo van Gogh supporting him working as an art dealer. Altman captures Van Gogh's creative process, particularly the scene where he paints sunflowers, as well as both brothers' obsessiveness and deep unhappiness. The theatrical film runs 138 minutes, but if you want more Van Gogh, there's also a TV cut that's 200 minutes long.

"I Shot Andy Warhol" is a look at Andy Warhol and The Factory through the lens of radical feminist and possibly schizophrenic Warhol-shooter Valerie Solanas. There's a bravura performance from Jared Harris as Warhol, Yo La Tengo cameos as the Velvet Underground and e-cigarette enthusiast Stephen Dorff plays Candy Darling. Solanas and her quest for her 15 minutes of fame aren't nearly as compelling as the rest, and you might find yourself watching with Warhol-like detachment when they dwell on Solanas' manifestos.

"High Art" is about a magazine editor (Radha Mitchell) who gets drawn into the world of a heroin-addicted photographer, both professionally and romantically. Ally Sheedy got numerous critical awards for her role as the photographer, including an Independent Spirit Award. It's a love story, but it's also about the unclear relationship between the practice of art and the desire for public acclaim.

Anthony Hopkins reunited with his frequent collaborators, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, for a movie about Pablo Picasso that depicts Picasso as kind of a jerk! The filmmakers didn't have permission to show any of Picasso's actual works, so instead we see more of Picasso's womanizing and boorish behavior than his painting. They also didn't get to use his official biography, so the screenplay is based on a rather gossipy book written by Arianna Huffington. Still, Hopkins does display Picasso's charisma and charm, as well as his bad behavior.

Charles Laughton plays Rembrandt van Rijn in Alexander Korda's "Rembrandt," a riches-to-rags story about the Dutch master. Laughton looks a lot like one of Rembrandt's last self-portraits, which helps with his characterization, and his real-life wife Elsa Lanchester plays a maid who becomes one of Rembrandt's lovers. Yes, she's coupled up with Rembrandt and Frankenstein on film. The movie is slightly fictionalized for dramatic effect, like when his patrons react badly when he paints "The Night Watch" — a painting that was cleaned a decade after this film came out and revealed to actually be a daylight scene.

Kirk Douglas is another actor to tackle the role of Vincent van Gogh in "Lust For Life." Why does Van Gogh appeal to actors so much? Perhaps they see themselves in him. After all, every performer secretly believes they are underappreciated in their own time. And what's cutting off your own ear but a radical form of plastic surgery? Douglas wore red whiskers and practiced painting crows to make his performance more believable, but Anthony Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as painter Paul Gauguin.

Derek Jacobi plays painter Francis Bacon and Daniel Craig plays his petty thief lover in "Love Is The Devil." Typically, they weren't able to use any of Bacon's real artwork, but the filmmakers deal with this by making the entire film resemble a Bacon painting — distorted reflections, filters and even a scene of Bacon brushing his teeth, shot to look like one of his triptychs. That being said, the real work of art in this film is young Daniel Craig's body.

Tim Burton's "Big Eyes" tells the story of Margaret Keane and her husband Walter, who took credit for her work for years. Though the conventional art world rejected her, Keane's paintings were popular in the '60s and '70s, and the film sides squarely with Keane against the critics. Amy Adams plays Margaret and Christoph Waltz plays Walter, who eventually go to court over the dispute for credit. And it ends in what is almost surely cinema's first courtroom paint-off.

Johannes Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring" is considered the most beautiful painting in the Netherlands, painted around 1665. The film "Girl With a Pearl Earring" fictionalizes the painting's creation — very little is known about Vermeer's life — by adding a maid who might be a painting genius, plus a sexy butcher's son and a lecherous art patron. It's basically fan fiction for fine art, which could be a successful literary genre.

Milos Forman's final film was "Goya's Ghosts," a sprawling epic about Spanish painter Francisco Goya and his struggles during the French Revolutions. The movie is beautiful, but it's packed with so much plot — trials, battles, show trials, real trials, lost babies, madness, secret children — that it's overwhelming. Just like the power of art! Eventually it ends with an execution, which Goya is of course sketching.

James Mason plays a jaded painter who returns home to Australia to recapture the spirit he had as a young artist. He quickly discovers that the key to recapturing his creativity is a local beach girl, played by Helen Mirren. He pays her to pose naked for him, and it brings back his old fire, which is either a statement about lust and creativity or a subtle commentary on older men taking advantage of younger women. Also, despite the title, Mirren was a completely legal 22-year-old when the film was made.

Another film about a beautiful younger woman inspiring an older artist, "La Belle Noiseuse" tells the story of reclusive painter Frenhofer who is inspired by a visiting artist's girlfriend to complete his masterpiece. The film's title translates to "The Beautiful Troublemaker," and is notable because it shows the painter creating in real time, with long shots of the artist working (hands provided by French artist Bernard Dufour). If you were wondering why the film clocks in at nearly four hours, well, that's why. Great art takes time!

"Frida" stars Salma Hayek as Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, directed by Broadway legend Julie Taymor with a final script purportedly written by Ed Norton (who plays Nelson Rockefeller). The story centers around Kahlo's fiery relationship with Diego Rivera and the way that Kahlo channeled the lifelong pain from her bus accident into her art. Taymor uses magical realism devices throughout to reflect Kahlo's style and wild imagination. But with her life full of great art, political intrigue and infidelities, the canvas of Kahlo's reality almost defies exaggeration.

The French film "Séraphine" tells the story of outsider artist Séraphine Louis, a housekeeper and shepherdess who became an acclaimed artist. The film shows the effect nature has on her creativity, and it even becomes a part of her compositions, as she uses materials like dirt and animal blood in her canvases. It also persuasively argues that her creativity provides an outlet for her mental illness. The film won seven of its nine Cesar Award nominations, and Yolande Moreau won many critics' awards for her performance.

"Mr. Turner" is Mike Leigh's film about the final quarter century in the life of British artist J.M.W. Turner. It's a spectacular-looking film about the eccentric artist, and not only does it capture what creativity is like in all its extremes (at one point Turner is tied to the mast of a ship so he can paint a snowstorm), the film itself feels like an explosive painting, bursting with color.

Emma Thompson stars as English painter Dora Carrington in "Carrington," alongside Jonathan Pryce as writer Lytton Strachey. The film concerns itself less with Carrington's artistic output and more for her unconventional romance with Strachey, who was 15 years older than her and homosexual. In fact, the film delves into all the cross-pollinating relationships among the Bloomsbury Group of artists — this film is simply less concerned with the art they created.

Leonardo DiCaprio played outsider artist Jack Dawson, who boarded the ship of dreams in James Cameron's "Titanic," but it's Cameron himself who did all the sketches in Jack's notebook. It's also Cameron's hands in the famous scene where Jack sketches Rose. However, this is a cautionary tale: The artist doesn't survive the shipwreck, and contemporary scholars have read the hubristic endeavor of the Titanic's voyage as a metaphor for taking out loans to go to art school. You'll be drowning in debt! Also, in real life, the sketch sold for over $16,000, so Jack might have been commercially successful if he'd found a second door to float on.