CAPSULE: Life (2015, Dir. Anton Corbijn)

As far as passion projects go, Life has Anton Corbjin's name stamped all over it. It's an obscure, tightly focussed biopic of photographer Dennis Stock, constrained on his brief professional dalliance with proto-movie star, James Dean. It's a film tied to a single magazine photo essay, if not to one black and white image alone, that of Dean, cigarette on lip, huddling in his own warmth against the drizzling enormity of Times Square.

Corbijn, a celebrated photographer himself, clearly sees merit in the material (a star-defining shot, one hero for him, one for the audience) but little in this straight faced, mumble-voiced outing captures the imprinting importance of the men's profile-building collaboration.

Stock and Dean are played with trademark finesse by Robert Pattinson (dead-eyed soulessness) and Dane DeHaan (neo-DiCaprioism) and they both do essence extremely well even if the physicality of Dean is noticeably absent. DeHaan's flashes of hyper-charisma recall YouTube memories of private Dean but they are too brief to retain interest as Life drags on.

In many respects, the banality of Corbijn's take on Dean (and that of his screenwriter Luke Davies) strips back the iconography. It does an admirable job of de-developing our image of the movie star and reasserting his personality beyond the paper-thin public image. It is just a shame that what is offered up isn't any more robust.

It is certainly no more compelling.

★★☆

Trailer: