REVIEW: If Only Joaquin Phoenix's Lost Year in I'm Still Here Had Stayed Lost

The problem is, whether real, not real, or some Spector-headed stepchild of the two, meltdowns are still not inherently interesting. Nor are "statements" about "meltdowns" and the state of "celebrity culture" that use too much of the poison to concoct what they might hope to construe as an antidote. Both Affleck and Phoenix have been adamantly mum about their intent, and now I see why: I'm Still Here is structured largely as a vérité data dump, a floppy, ugly look at an actor in a tailspin of vile and/or pitiable behavior that we are invited to figure out as the participants dissolve behind a veil of artistic prerogative. I imagine the ensuing, divergent reactions (Misogynist! Genius!) will be incorporated into a performance prank that is very much ongoing. I also think that Affleck and Phoenix overestimated the interest anyone would have in assuming so much of this project's interpretive burden. I don't know about the rest of you, but I stopped guessing about 13 months ago, and this film did nothing to re-engage my interest.

"Satire is a lesson," Nabokov said. "Parody is a game." For the most part, I'm Still Here is neither, it's simply punishing blather. "Haven't you noticed the change in me, dude?" Phoenix rasps to one of his obsequious assistants ("If he wants to do something," one of them says, with wide, helpless eyes, "we do it"). "Isn't it f**king incredible?" From his first moments on screen, Phoenix is a suffocating, insufferable presence, a figure of dissolution and uncontainable, megalomaniacal rages. An arc is jammed into the film like an oversized coat hanger: Phoenix wants to be a rapper, he explains to P. Diddy (who, along with Ben Stiller, makes a painfully funny appearance), because hip hop feels real to him; Hollywood and acting are a "prison of characterization." He then becomes paranoid about an assistant leaking details about his "darkumennary" to the press. Quite justifiably insecure, he veers between clueless entitlement and crippling doubt, though they play like variations on the same note. Phoenix covers his lime green eyes with Orbison shades and obscures his beautiful, twisted features with a head-swallowing riot of hair. His figure slackens and distends; by the end of the year he appears to have entered his third trimester.

Affleck seems to want to split the difference between absolute vérité (he is credited as a cinematographer along with Magdalena Gorka, who along with a female producer is now suing him for sexual harassment) and footage manhandled for maximum ironical effect. A couple of witty moments bubble to the surface: Gorka's camera captures Phoenix's surprise red carpet announcement of his retirement from an obscured angle. Affleck then plays the tabloid-packaged version of the same announcement, complete with nasal, Guy Smiley voice-over. From this second angle we can see both Phoenix and Affleck clearly, and the latter is staring right into the reporter's camera, like he knows something we don't.

I mean, maybe, but I doubt it. And if he does, he was woefully unable to build it into this film, which revels instead in projectile puke, flopping penises, and graphic dump-taking, as if these are the new, indisputable signifiers not of base animal behavior but authenticity. My critical energies unengaged, I tried to tune into a different frequency. When I did, I felt a loathing radiating out from every frame, and before drawing out a healthy dose from my own ample stores in return, that loathing neutralized every other feeling I was willing to give.

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