DRAMA; 1hr 51min
STARRING: Robert Pattinson, Dane DeHaan, Joel Edgerton
Magnum opus: DeHaan (left) and Pattinson
In 1955, 26-year-old Magnum Photos photographer Dennis Stock (Pattinson, hungry and haunted) meets relatively unknown actor James “Jimmy” Dean (DeHaan) at a Hollywood do. The way Control director Anton Corbijn elegantly tells it — and DeHaan nonchalantly invokes him — 24-year-old Jimmy comes off at first as a space cadet. But after watching a preview of his upcoming movie East of Eden, Dennis, who has had it with the red-carpet grind, is swayed by Jimmy’s talent into pushing him towards a photo essay for Life magazine.
The going is all uphill, Jimmy being flighty and Dennis under the gun from sceptical Magnum Photos head John Morris (Edgerton). But the shooter and the shooting star are not such an unlikely alliance — they’re both creative square pegs with fractured personal lives and each is on the cusp of otherness. Jimmy will go on to fame and tragedy and Dennis to a career breakthrough with quintessential images of his new friend in Times Square and at Jimmy’s childhood Indiana farm. To meet them up close in Corbijn’s contemplative treatment is an unexpected privilege and inescapably sad.
