The title is unfortunate. This passionless, somnolent movie from Anton Corbijn has a numbed solemnity and tranquillised moodiness that has more to do with death. A hushed respect for the early demise of James Dean is effectively backdated into the film’s fabric. It’s a period drama that sleepwalks its way through the story of how Life magazine got its iconic 1955 photo spread about Dean: those intimate images of the charismatic young actor on the rainy streets of New York and at home on the family farm. Dean died soon after the pictures were taken. Dane DeHaan is an eerie likeness for Dean and Robert Pattinson plays Dennis Stock, the ambitious young photographer who persuaded Dean to co-operate. Granted, Stock is supposed to be the non-charismatic one, but Pattinson gives what is simply a dull performance in a dull role: something in the casting and conception is wrong from the outset. Maybe he would have been better as Dean.
There is no chemistry between the two men, no interesting way of allowing Pattinson to make sense of a submissive role and the complexity of James Dean’s sexual identity is left unexamined, though there are some hints, kept locked in a heavy closet of the film’s own making. Corbijn has directed exciting and demanding movies in the past and, as someone who made a brilliant career in photography, he arguably understands more about it than any film director working. Perhaps the subject induced a fatal self-consciousness.
