Weaving links between New York’s auction houses and art dealers, a revered British Leonardo da Vinci expert, one opportunistic Swiss go-between, a Russian oligarch, London’s Tate Gallery, Le Musée du Louvre in Paris, and a Saudi Arabian prince, journalist Antoine Vitkine delves into the secrets of the art world, and explores the influence that one painting can have. After mysteriously appearing, a painting titled Salvator Mundi (The Savior of the World) was sold at Christie’s auction house, for a record 450 million US dollars in 2017. Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci after its discovery, what became the most expensive piece of art ever has unleashed passions, while revealing the excesses of our time. Journeying along the hidden trails of money, power, and deception lying behind this questionable masterpiece, this film asks: is this really the work of the Italian genius, or one of the greatest scams in the history of art?
Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor, and grounded in the illuminating presence and words of Didion herself. This is most certainly a film about loss—the loss of a solid American center, the personal losses of a husband and a child—but Didion describes everything she sees and experiences so attentively, so fully, and so bravely that she transforms the very worst of life into occasions for understanding. A Netflix release.
