Been thinking about how movies use fine art to flesh out their villains.
A few of these examples use fine art and fine art ownership to communicate that the villain is wealthy, educated, or has access to the fine art world. In many stories, that in itself is evil or the result of evil behavior. Fine art ownership is an easy way to establish that.
It’s easy to use a character’s interpretation of a familiar piece of art to quickly understand how they see the world. In most of these movies, the villain takes a moment to describe their relationship with the piece. For some, it is commodity and symbol of status, like Miles and Mona Lisa. For others, it is something far more personal, such as the Fisk and Nathan examples.
Many of these characters are seemingly obsessed with the work. Fisk is seen staring at the piece, motionless. We soon find out why. Nathan is also obsessed with the Pollock piece. The writers are creating these obsessions with these specific pieces to exemplify what work of art represents that villain’s ideals or view of the world. Their obsession with a single piece of art and philosophy is what creates villains– a narrow worldview that they have deemed as better than all the others; a worldview they feel they have been made soldiers of enforcing. Of course, the world works nothing like this and that’s what’s wrong with villains too.
The art itself generally has no character, no voice, no bias. In fact, to me, in all these shots, the artwork looks like an unwilling prisoner. Worst of all, they become an object that the villain completely projects onto, staining what could or should be seen as pure. It takes a certain arrogance to own priceless works as well as claim you figured out what it means, when often times that means you are dismissing the original artist entirely, an evil of its own.
The simple ownership of a pivotal, priceless piece of art like the Mona Lisa points out Miles’ ego, sense of self importance and intelligence and overall selfishness. That’s not even to mention any or all of these characters’ relationship with capitalism, which to some, is symbolized by the concept of fine art itself.
it’s worth mentioning that Killmonger’s situation deviates from the others, as he does not own the pieces. In fact, he wishes to free them; a noble cause given the fact the pieces were stolen. That’s what is interesting about Killmonger’s character as a whole. He can be seen as having just cause but unjust means. Though he wants to free the art, he resorts to violence to do so, which becomes a strong metaphor for the rest of the film.
the work selected is never an accident. these examples are exceptionally well selected and carefully thought through. the characters aren’t as obsessed with art as a whole as much as they are obsessed with one particular piece for some reason, a reason that always emerges in the story later on.
and idk man just shotout to writers and set designers and costume departments for worldbuilding usually off of one piece of art and a monologue attached to it, very underrated shit
