Late Fame stars Willem Dafoe as a postal worker whose single book of poetry – published nearly 50 years earlier – is rediscovered by a coterie of young fans who declare him ‘a genius’. It’s a tragicomedy – a satire on literary self-regard – that also manages to be exquisitely tender, delicate and a deeply layered character study. Dafoe is wonderful and, for once, is centre stage, playing a regular guy rather than some supporting-character weirdo. You can read everything on Dafoe’s face – a face that seems to have more bones than is needed in a face. It’s a face that renders the script hardly necessary.
The film is based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (the Austrian-Jewish author who also wrote the book that inspired Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut) that was written in 1895 but not published until 2014 – so late fame, it can happen. (Fascinating author, fascinating story, look him up; Nazis are involved.)
Here, the action has been transposed from Vienna to New York, where Edward Saxberger (Dafoe) leads a low-key but not discontented life. He sorts mail by day; may join his fellow workers at a bar for a game of snooker by night; resides in a modest yet comfortable apartment. His literary past is entirely forgotten until an impassioned young fan, Meyers (Edmund Donovan), arrives on his doorstep. He picked up Way to Go, a volume of poetry that Saxberger published in 1979, insists the poems still ‘slap you across the face with their style and relevancy’, and declares it ‘a masterpiece’. Dafoe, even in these opening moments, is magnetic. Everything plays out on that face: astonishment, disbelief, pleasure, yearning. He demurs initially. ‘I had my moment,’ he insists. ‘This will be a new moment,’ counters Meyers, who wears a turtleneck (always a bad sign) and speaks like he’s in a period drama. He may be in earnest but is his judgment to be trusted? You will worry for Saxberger from the off.
Meyers eventually charms Saxberger into meeting with his artistic community, a largely unpublished group of self-declared intellectuals called the Enthusiasm Society. They fall on Saxberger – because didn’t Bukowski also work for the post office? They’re poseurs. We know it. Saxberger knows it. But Saxberger is seduced by the notion that maybe he is a great poet – too sophisticated to be hanging out with his blue–collar friends. The narrative arc, such as it is, builds towards a public reading of the new work he is expected to write. Along the way he encounters an actress, Gloria (Greta Lee), who is one of his keenest admirers but is flighty in the manner of Sally Bowles. She performs Brecht and Weill’s song ‘Surabaya Johnny’ wonderfully – I didn’t know Lee had that in her – and is bewitching. There’s also a branding meeting with a publisher who thus far has only produced a book on pies. The comedy always comes with a melancholy undertow. Was he, is he, a great poet? Or will it end in tears?
Directed by Kent Jones (Diane; Hitchcock/Truffaut) with a script by the Oscar-nominated Samy Burch (May December), it’s all handled in a way that respects Saxberger. We’re never asked to laugh at him. Expressive but grounded, Dafoe’s performance awards him a quiet dignity at all times. In fact I’m not convinced the film would be that interesting without him. Perhaps more everyman parts will now come his way. Tom Hanks had better watch out.
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