“Is it that your dreams are unattainable or that you’re dreaming the wrong dream?” questions Joaquin Phoenix — fat, smelly, bearded, and perpetually drugged in “I’m Still Here.” The question, which arises halfway through this Casey Affleck-filmed documentary about Phoenix’s reinvention as a whack-ass, dope-smoking rapper, is less an actual question than a rhetorical one. In truth, his dream of becoming a rapper was both wrong and unattainable; he’s just that bad.
Let’s get this out of the way — the whole “Joaquin Phoenix went batshit crazy, quit acting and is now pursuing a rap career” thing is phony, a farce. It is downright staged. The documentary itself chronicles two of the lost years in Phoenix’s life, in which we witness the “former actor” announcing “Two Lovers” as his last film, Googling for hookers, snorting coke, fearing betrayal from his closest companions, vying for P. Diddy’s production expertise, attempting to build street cred and, well, scratching his beard.
Recently, however, a clean-shaven, coherent Phoenix appeared in a suicide-prevention charity advertisement alongside Miley Cyrus. And though he turned down the role as Edgar Allan Poe in “The Raven,” he is now connected to “Big Shoe” as the film’s protagonist, a footwear designer with a foot fetish. There’s no way a bumbling, drug causality could have reverted back to normality that quickly.
These authenticity-challenging revelations only became evident during the post-production of “I’m Still Here.” Retrospectively, we can now truly appreciate what actually occurred in the film: Phoenix is acting — in real life — as ragged, demented Joaquin Phoenix, who is acting — in the documentary — as ragged, demented Joaquin Phoenix. This is some meta shit, homies.
Read the full review at the Washington Square News.
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