The Prague Post
December 1st, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

The bad dream factory

A flawed but fascinating look at the Warhol era
Cinema Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 25th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Assembly-line fame. Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce take on the Warhol age.
enlarge
Factory Girl

Directed by George Hickenlooper
With Guy Pearce, Sienna Miller, Hayden Christensen, Jimmy Fallon, Beth Grant and Edward Herrmann

George Hickenlooper’s film exploring the Warhol Factory days of fallen socialite Edie Sedgwick made few friends in the States. Two very distinct factions, both ably represented in his film, took exception to Hickenlooper’s interpretation of events.
On the one side were the Warholics, who objected to the film’s portrayal of the man who would define (for good or ill) contemporary America’s ironic detachment and slavishness to surfaces.
On the other side raged that paragon of folk authenticity, Bob Dylan, who threatened suit over being shown as Edie’s lover — though legal action was never taken, especially after one of Sedgwick’s brothers came forward to reveal intimate details of the relationship between the singer and his sister that included an abortion. That last claim remains unsubstantiated, but, due to Dylan’s intransigence, his name is never uttered in the film.
There are fictionalized moments in Hickenlooper’s film, though anyone familiar with the Jean Stein–George Plimpton book on the poor little rich girl, Edie: An American Biography, will find little in the way of wild license. Still, both sides equally maintained that the film unfairly pegs Sedgwick’s decline into drugs and eventual death on both Warhol and Dylan’s actions, which is simply not supportable after a careful viewing of Factory Girl.
The sad fact is that Sedgwick came damaged to both relationships. While both men undoubtedly contributed to her slide, neither (as the film makes clear) were ultimately responsible for the tragic denouement. To rob Stein and Plimpton of their book’s subtitle, Edie Sedgwick truly was an American story of a particular time and place.
The young artist-turned-fashion-model arrived in Manhattan, where she fell under the sway of Andy Warhol, who was just gaining his reputation as the idiot savant–like genius of the New York art scene. Warhol’s flippant boldness and cultivated vacuity enticed Sedgwick, and she was soon one of the principal Factory girls (or Warholka, as the clever Czech title for the film would have it), becoming one of the “superstars” of Warhol’s cinema.
As enmeshed as she was in Warhol’s world, Sedgwick began to cross over into Dylan’s, a foreign, antithetical camp to the Factory. Sedgwick then found herself caught between two powerful, opposing cultural forces, becoming, symbolically in this film, the battleground for these tensions.
The primary problem with Hickenlooper’s film is that, though ostensibly the story of Sedgwick, it never really portrays a fully fleshed, psychologically complex character, despite Sienna Miller’s insightful performance. In fact, it’s better to view this film as an intriguing analysis of the dynamics and upheaval prevalent in American culture in the 1960s.
The highlight of the film is the actual meeting between Warhol and the unnamed Dylan, when the latter comes to the Factory for a “film test.” The clash of personalities and philosophies is riveting, as is Sedgwick’s anguish over the failure of these two halves of her life to connect.
Hickenlooper portrays both sides fairly. While Dylan’s quest for authenticity is far more attractive than Warhol’s trivial pursuits, the singer’s preoccupation with money seems as tasteless as his gibes against Warhol’s Brillo boxes. The Factory personalities appear refreshingly naive compared to the singer’s tough business sense.
Miller’s excellent Edie aside, Hickenlooper gets a frighteningly true impersonation of Warhol from Guy Pearce. Pearce seems to be channeling the soup-can master’s spirit, down to the ironical, gnome tenor voice and physical characteristics.
Hayden Christensen likewise presents Dylan far more vividly than the uttering of his name could achieve. And there’s excellent support from Jimmy Fallon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Edward Herrmann and the marvelous Beth Grant.
There are some great lines to savor as well. Sedgwick neatly describes Warhol’s work as having turned the American “assembly line into a punch line,” while the empress of Vogue, Diana Vreeland, tells Sedgwick that she has become vulgar, then follows with “but that’s better than being boring.”
Hickenlooper concludes his film with actual interview clips from, among others, Gerard Malanga and the late Plimpton. These brief spots offer a far richer image of Sedgwick than the preceding 90 minutes provided. However, as an evocation of Sedgwick’s age, Factory Girl is stunning.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (25/07/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.