Three films expose ageing artists' ego as defence mechanism
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- Bitter Christmas, directed by Pedro Almodóvar, centres on Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a queer film-maker who mines his manager Mónica's (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) personal crises for a semi-autobiographical script, with Raúl himself serving as Almodóvar's own avatar.
- Late Fame, directed by Kent Jones, follows Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe), a New York postal worker whose obscure 1979 poetry collection "Way Past Go" earns him a cult following among the hip Enthusiasm Society — though he then struggles to compose a single new line after agreeing to write again.
- The Christophers, directed by Steven Soderbergh, features Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen), a painter who sabotages his own legacy by flogging works on the street, recording crotchety Cameo videos and refusing to complete his acclaimed portrait series The Christophers, based on a former lover.
- Across all three films, the male artists use narcissism as an "overactive defence mechanism" against the "crushing admission" that time has eroded their talent, passion and masculine creative virility — and the piece notes all three protagonists are male.
- The essay positions this new crop as successors to Sunset Boulevard, 8½ and All About Eve, reading them as a "sadder, bitterer" cycle that questions whether success, rediscovery or anointed genius can actually cure the artists' deepest melancholy.
Why it matters: These three films read as a direct counterpoint to the entertainment industry's current fixation on youth — the same month brought speculation about directors under 30 topping the box office — and they reframe artist narcissism not as villainy but as a sympathetic shield against the terror of creative irrelevance. The essay's core insight, that ego is an "overactive defence mechanism" against mortality, gives viewers a more compassionate lens on ageing creative figures than the bitter-genius trope usually allows.
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