I'm Still Here

With the release of I'm Still Here it became clear that there was method to Joaquin Phoenix's madness. Method acting. His two year odyssey to become a rapper was revealed not to have been an authentic celebrity meltdown but a hoax for a mockumentary directed by his brother-in-law, Casey Affleck. This was perhaps obvious – surely the actor who had so ably mimicked Johnny Cash wouldn't have been such a terrible MC?

Yet these revelations have left the film itself curiously redundant. It plays it absolutely straight, treating the character Phoenix has created as wholly authentic. His toe-curling public appearances on stage and TV (most famously on the Letterman Show) display a kamikaze commitment to the role, but in the scenes of his “private life” he is so deeply unpleasant, inarticulate and unsympathetic that it is difficult to maintain your interest. Phoenix and Affleck seem to want to make a comment on life lived in the public eye; instead, they have produced an unenlightening simulation of it.