I remember watching this a few years ago and being completely enamored with the story of Bacon’s life as told by many of the people who knew him. I was also only slightly familiar with Bacon and his work at the time, so to watch this deepish dive into his personal life was extremely gripping to me at the time, sitting in a lonely apartment very late at night.
It’s too much though. I guess if you want to hear an interesting series of friends and acquaintances going on and on about their own personal theories and gossips about Bacon, then this does provide an interesting extra angle to his work. But on rewatch, something about it just strikes me as being in poor taste. It’s not all bad or horrible or defamatory, but it is far from objective in most cases.
The best parts of this doc concern Bacon’s actual art— and it is very fascinating to hear Bacon’s friends and contemporaries discuss his works with some different contexts than a museum placard might inform. I would have preferred more of that than a loosy-goosy tale of S&M in London’s underbelly which just happened to result in some unbelievable art.
I remember watching this a few years ago and being completely enamored with the story of Bacon’s life as told by many of the people who knew him. I was also only slightly familiar with Bacon and his work at the time, so to watch this deepish dive into his personal life was extremely gripping to me at the time, sitting in a lonely apartment very late at night.
It’s too much though. I guess if you want to hear an interesting series of friends and acquaintances going on and on about their own personal theories and gossips about Bacon, then this does provide an interesting extra angle to his work. But on rewatch, something about it just strikes me as being in poor taste. It’s not all bad or horrible or defamatory, but it is far from objective in most cases.
The best parts of this doc concern Bacon’s actual art— and it is very fascinating to hear Bacon’s friends and contemporaries discuss his works with some different contexts than a museum placard might inform. I would have preferred more of that than a loosy-goosy tale of S&M in London’s underbelly which just happened to result in some unbelievable art.
