Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures **** (2016, documentary) – Movie Review

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s riveting 2016 American documentary film is a fascinating two-hour examination of the life and work of the revered and controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

It captures on camera almost all the important participators in Mapplethorpe’s life in candid and revealing – and entertaining – interviews (apart, notably, from his first lover Patti Smith), and lets Mapplethorpe tell his own story in previously unpublished sound tapes. Among the witnesses are Debbie Harry, Fran Lebowitz, brother and colleague Robert Mapplethorpe, and his sister, Paul Martineau and Brooke Shields.

It also does what it says on the tin, respects the artist by tells his life story and looking at the still provocative pictures (it still manages to swing an 18 certificate!). As an excitingly thorough, completist study that does loving homage and full justice to Mapplethorpe’s surprising talent, it just couldn’t be better.

Self Portrait 1980 by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989).

It was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2016, with the international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, and a world TV premiere on HBO in April, then released theatrically in the US and UK on 22 April 2016.