In this fast-moving world of AI, tales of students using the tool to write essays and examination answers are anathema to someone who has grown up respecting the English language and the originality which flows from those who can write.
Of course, there will always be cheats – they exist in every industry and aspect of life, from medical practitioners to dole recipients – but there is always scant hope that a breath of fresh air exists in the honesty of mankind.
There is always scant hope that a writer can be original, drawing on their own experiences to fashion characters and dialogue. In The Christophers (2025) oh what dialogue.
Writer Ed Solomon created The Christophers from a blank page. Director Steven Soderbergh, with whom he has collaborated several times, took the piece and made it visual. And aren’t we blessed?
Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) is a very old and soon-to-be-dying, London-based artist whose glory years are decades behind him. He has two children who know they aren’t going to inherit a penny. However, this odious pair – comically portrayed by Jessica Gunning and James Corden – know their father has a third set of unfinished paintings which the old man has stored in an attic, never to be looked at again.
These are portraits of his one love named Christopher and, since their breakup, he has lost his desire to create. In the past two decades, Julian has stopped painting, sold his art for a fraction of its value while sitting at a stall, become an acerbic critic of young artists on a television show – think Simon Cowell on Britain’s Got Talent – and currently makes money from the internet. Here he pleasantly answers questions from subscribers where he is paid for each contact and more if he signs his name across the screen.
Julian has opted out of life in what he views a fatuous world. He has become hypercritical of the art world, the fees charged by exhibitors and the exorbitant amounts paid for art by “biotech billionaires” who know nothing about the subject.
However, life is about to change as he encounters Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), employed by the frightful children to get a job with Julian and secretly finish the works. The plan is for the completed canvases to be left in situ, “discovered” after death and sold for millions of pounds.
Lori is a talented artist and established forger but she also has history with Julian. As a 19-year-old student she was coruscated by him on the TV show, shattering her confidence and reducing her to a life of art as survival rather than creation.
What follows is a to-and-fro of her getting to know Julian, realising she has something to offer him rather than be in cahoots with the children, turning on him and then turning back towards him. All this is laced with brilliant dialogue, much of it relating to art and most of it said by Lori. The viewer realises she isn’t just some run-of-the-mill, wannabe artist but a woman who really knows her subject. Though what she says went way over the head of this critic, you get the idea that Solomon knew what he was writing.
All this is said in a virtual two-hander between McKellen and Coel, on the most elaborate set design I have ever seen. Every inch of where Julian lives is covered with something – paintings, framed newspaper references, hat stands, a megaphone, canvasses, paints, coats and scarves – all positioned over at least three floors of two connected houses in inner London. It was testament to the two stars that it was hard to take your eyes off them when so much detail was in the room they occupied at the time.
Indeed, Coel was magnetic. Often shot in profile, with different shades of light on her beautiful face, she was described by one of my colleagues as “like an avatar”. A skier could launch from her cheekbones into snowbound oblivion.
McKellen is just old and superb and similarly camera friendly. His performance reminded me of the equally great Peter O’Toole and how he would have played the role.
Any more detail would ruin a beautiful film for any potential viewer.
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*Steven Soderbergh had a spectacular feature directorial debut as a 26-year-old with sex, lies & videotape (1989) and has followed with movies in a variety of genre, including Erin Brokovich (2000), Traffic (2000), the Ocean’s Eleven set (beginning 2001), and Che parts 1 & 2 (2008). He has been equally busy since.
*Ed Solomon wrote The Christophers with McKellen and Coel already in his mind as the leads. Neither actor even knew about the project let alone they had been earmarked to appear.
4.5
I WRIGHT 