Ayo Edebiri stars in Opus.Anna Kooris/A24
- Opus
- Written and directed by Mark Anthony Green
- Starring Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich and Tony Hale
- Classification 14A; 103 minutes
- Opens in select theatres March 14
The debut feature film from former GQ Magazine editor Mark Anthony Green, Opus seems more primed than most to stage an insider’s critique of the cult of celebrity.
Starring Ayo Edebiri (FX’s The Bear) as 27-year-old Ariel Ecton, Opus introduces its lead character as a quietly ambitious journalist at a New York-based, GQ-esque print publication who is frequently passed over for opportunities. Seemingly reliable and able to churn out interesting pitches on a dime, Ariel’s biggest pitfall as a journalist is her lack of novelty in an industry consumed with the next big thing.
As her friend Kent (Young Mazino) shares with her over lunch, Ariel hasn’t “made it” because she doesn’t have much of a story to tell. Tellingly, while Ariel dreams of some day writing a memoir, she has virtually no compelling life experiences to draw from – there is nothing to set her apart from an entire generation of other young, middle-of-the-road journalists also hoping to make their byline a household name.
It is a subtle indictment of a very specific, privileged twenty-something desire for something between professional recognition and celebrity status that serves as a preface to the exact kind of out-of-this-world opportunity Ariel has been waiting for. When mononymous pop star Moretti (John Malkovich) announces that he is coming out of a 30-year-long retirement in order to release his 18th album, Caesar’s Request, Ariel is shocked to find herself personally invited to a listening party at the star’s remote Utah compound alongside a small roster of legacy media journalists.
John Malkovich plays mononymous pop star Moretti in Opus.Anna Kooris/A24
An international pop music icon at the level of Prince or David Bowie, Moretti has been near recluse for decades and, in typical fashion, members of the press are falling over themselves to get not just the inside scoop but any sort of proximity to the star. When Ariel and her fellow guests arrive in Utah, they are made to hand over their phones and laptops and greeted with a stacked weekend itinerary, an ominous, ever-present personal concierge assigned to each of them, as well as a new, custom-fitted wardrobe fashioned to Moretti’s liking.
It’s an anxious choreography of manners and personal boundaries a la Mark Mylod’s The Menu or Zoe Kravitz’s Blink Twice, which is tempered even further by the kind of mindless tribalism Moretti’s celebrity effects on his guests – the exception, of course, being Ariel. While her fellow guests are quick to do all that Moretti asks of them (including shaving their pubic hair as per his preference), Ariel views Moretti and his compound of cult-like followers, called Levelists, with a more reticent eye.
While the social satire and cult mystery of Opus isn’t particularly groundbreaking, its visual form offers a refreshing convergence of shooting styles and formats. Cinematographer Tommy Maddox-Upshaw offers some of the film’s best moments with meticulous overhead shots and a sense of visual composition and staging which manages to be precise and organic at the same time.
The film’s opening scene – a slow motion montage of a seemingly never-ending audience of fans screaming, crying, and undulating at an onstage Moretti during the peak of his 1990s celebrity – is of particular note, underscoring his god-like status with its dynamic formalism. This fresh, kinetic approach is echoed later in the film when, fresh from their Moretti-approved makeovers, Ariel and the guests take their first listen of Caesar’s Request as Moretti, clad in a metallic silver suit and Rick Owens platform boots, writhes and gyrates amongst them.
It’s a moment that weds the false idolatry of Kanye West’s famed “Sunday Service” performances with whatever we can assume used to happen at Prince’s Paisley Park in the late hours of the night. It’s also a turning point in the film, when Moretti’s all-too-easily gained control over his guests’ appearances, meals and movements finally spills over into the beginnings of true body horror.
Unfortunately, Opus isn’t able to keep up the tension of its cult-horror mystery, speeding through its reveals with a surprising laziness that feels counter to the care it initially took in building out its story. Green’s script stumbles over itself as it runs to the finish line, offering only vague explanations of Moretti’s motivations and the Levelists’ vision of the world. It’s a particular shame as Malkovich is clearly enjoying himself, and offers his monologues, however ambiguous, plot-wise, with his trademark gravitas.
In this vein, Edebiri’s Ariel struggles in relation to Malkovich’s heady onscreen presence and, similarly, their characters’ relationship is woefully underserved. In the few moments we get to witness Ariel and Moretti circle one another in an inquisitive, if gently adversarial, rapport of words, Green’s script pulls back too early, leaving the substance of their once-in-a-lifetime meeting mostly uninterrogated.
Even as the film’s tacked-on epilogue purports to leave us closer to the truth of Moretti, of the Levelists, of Ariel’s plucky ambition, we are left with more questions than answers and offered instead only vague platitudes about celebrity, infamy and art. Much like another recent visually stylish A24 thriller of manners, Heretic, Opus stages a meticulously built-up world that sputters out in its final, confused moments, unable to meet the challenge of its own determined ideology.
