Poetry used to be widely read. It was considered important. Now, when most people don’t read it, poets may justifiably feel nostalgic about the days when intellectuals gathered in Greenwich Village coffee houses and wrote poems. It’s been idealized, and in the new comedy-drama Late Fame, it’s a subject of wistful satire.
Willem Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, an older man living in lower Manhattan who has worked at the post office for the past 36 years. He is single, and his life outside of work seems to consist of hanging out at the local bar playing pool with other guys from the neighborhood. Coming home from his job one evening, he is met by a young man named Wilson Meyers, who says he’s been looking for him. He read a book of poetry by Saxberger that was published in 1979, and wants to thank him for changing his life. Ed hasn’t written any poems since then, so naturally this surprises him. But he doesn’t mind the praise, and when Myers approaches him again later, he agrees to go to a coffee house where there meets a little writer’s group they call, with some self-deprecating humor, “The Enthusiasm Society.”
Meyers is played by Edmund Donovan, who is very funny in the role—deferential, pretentious, clearly full of himself. The group is composed of some affluent young men talking about going back to the days before social media ruined everything. They’re all foolish and pretentious, but Saxberger clearly, although skeptically, enjoys being idolized by them. At a later gathering, he is introduced to their female muse, an actress named Gloria, played by Greta Lee, who assumes an air of absurdly exaggerated flirtation. But Ed senses something substantial underneath all the posing.
The story of Late Fame was adapted from a novella by the late 19th-early 20th century Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, with the story moved from Vienna to modern day New York City. The witty screenplay is by Samy Burch, who wrote the recent film May December. She’s having quite a moment now, having also written the popular new comedy Coyote v. Acme. The director is Kent Jones, whom up until now I’ve known only as an excellent film critic. He sports a light touch here, with a modest low-key atmosphere and allows the humor to breathe. Willem Dafoe is the perfect center of this bittersweet satire, awkwardly navigating this youthful environment, gradually letting it go to his head. Myers offers to get him an agent, and the group plans to do a reading in which Saxberger will be billed as the headliner. Can Ed write a new poem for the event? He has his doubts, but says yes anyway.
These young people claiming to have risen above attention-seeking in pursuit of their art are of course not above it at all, but actually motivated by this need for validation. And in the course of the film they become ever more hilarious and pathetic. A deeper element, however, is the struggle of the man who once wrote a good poetry book, but then settled into a life of obscurity. The possibility of fame is a temptation that throws Saxberger off balance, even making him ashamed of his bar buddies and infatuated with this crazy Gloria woman. Can his career as a poet be resurrected? Late Fame represents a gently humorous corrective for cherished illusions.
