The Muse
Inspiration cannot be planned. It doesn’t work on a timetable. When it comes, it comes- that’s kind of the point. It doesn’t care when your deadline is, but it does care if you don’t seize on it. Right now, Addison Taylor isn’t quite on speaking terms with inspiration after his big hit, “F*#% You Like a Porn Star,” and he’s got a winter deadline approaching for the follow-up. His agent sends him to a lake house to get away from life and write, but will his inspiration find him?
Writer-director Rufus Chaffee has some unusual, otherworldly things in store for his main character in “The Muse.” That main character is played quite well by Isaac Simons, who etches a compelling portrait of a man who has the soul of an artist, but not necessarily the talent and discipline. When we first see him, he’s got a woman sleeping on top of him– he’s convinced his label sent her to spy on him. The first thing he does when he gets to the lake is throw away a bottle of pills, something he probably leaned on with his last effort. When Addison gets in the zone, though, the juices are flowing, and things are looking promising. But something unusual is going on in this house, and when he sees a beautiful woman (Marguerite Insolia) walking through the house one night, he’s not sure what to think, although a neighbor might provide some answers.
So many times in movies, we get this romanticized look at creative inspiration. One of the things I like about this movie and “The Symphony,” a 2011 movie that also took a dark, twisted look at the artistic process, is that they seem to capture the reality, the frustration, of musical creation, as well as that feeling of success when you strike gold, and the ideas start coming up to the surface, better than more conventional films on the subject. Is it always this bleak, the act of making music, or any other art? Of course not, but it can feel that way sometimes, and that’s where films like “The Muse” get it right, because they capture something primal, and intense, that only other artists can understand. Chaffee and Simons (who wrote the original music for Addison) are unafraid of tackling that dark side head on, and even though the film they’ve made turns into a straight-up horror film by the end, the internal struggle Addison faces is what makes the film such an exciting one to watch.
