Robert Pattinson Nude and Gay on New DVD Release: Little Ashes

Before the phenomenally popular Twilight franchise, actor Robert Pattinson took a risky role in the film Tiny Ashes, not released until after Twilight. In Tiny Ashes, Pattison dresses and acts effeminately and undresses for a gay sex scene as he plays the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí; the title of the film is a translation of the title of Dalí's painting Cenicitas, which you can see and learn more about here (original Spanish) or here (English translation).

Little Ashes premiered in London, October 2008, followed by a limited release in the United States last year, playing in specialty theaters and art houses (such as the Polk Theatre here in Lakeland, Florida) and at film festivals. Little Ashes is quite an achievement, not because it gets Robert Pattinson out of his trousers. More importantly, it makes boring three of the most brilliant creative artists of the twentieth century, filmmaker Luis Buñuel (played by Matthew McNulty), poet Federico García Lorca (played by Javier Beltrán), and painter Salvador Dalí. (The links for the actors take you to their entries in the Internet Movie Database, while the links to the historical figures take you to their entries in Wikipedia.)

The film opens in Madrid in 1922, a year of turmoil and creativity around the world (literature in English was enriched that year by The Waste Land and Ulysses). Spain is dealing with the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, another war in Morocco, and the decline of the monarchy.

The three young men are caught up in various movements in their culture. Gradually, Dalí (who seems to have had so many problems that he was never interested sexually in anyone) and García Lorca (who was gay) are drawn together, at first to the puzzlement and later disgust of Buñuel, who moves to Paris to make his films.

The emphasis on the plot is the relationship between Dalí and García Lorca. According to statements made by Dalí, although he did not want to have a sexual relationship with García Lorca, they experimented. From what I have read, if Dalí were telling the truth (he did not always do so), the film portrays their relationship accurately.

The problem is, who cares? Watching the film, I wondered what was more troubling, all the years that Dalí would fritter away his talent in his odd relationship with his wife, the exotic, older Gala, who apparently had enough sex drive for both of them, and the pursuit of money, or the thought of García Lorca tragically murdered at the age of thirty-eight. Yet, neither issue is dealt with in this film. Three great artists come across as three boring, spoiled brats.

Little Ashes is perhaps the most Spanish film ever made in English. Unfortunately, although only one of its three stars, Javier Beltrán, is a native speaker of Spanish, everyone speaks with such a heavy Spanish accent that subtitles would be appreciated. The worst misstep with language occurs when García Lorca recites his poems. Beltrán speaks them in the original Spanish (bravo!) but we simultaneously hear them in English, so the audience cannot appreciate the sound of the original or absorb the meaning of the translations.

As you watch the film, you can catch a brief glimpse (even briefer that of Pattinson unclothed) of the (in)famous first film that Buñuel and Dalí collaborated on, Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), probably the most analyzed sixteen minutes of film in history. Watch it (here), and you will learn more about what Buñuel, Dalí, and García Lorca were up to than you can get from all of Little Ashes. You might gain a little insight into Buñuel's work by reading an article of mine (here).

There are few glimpses of the still copyright-protected paintings of Salvador Dalí, but on the made-for-surrealism Internet, you can find a number of his works (here, for example). García Lorca's poetry is available online in English (here and here) and in Spanish (here). You can even compare Dalí's iconic mustache (here) with the almost prosthetic thing stuck onto Pattinson's lip (here).

Since you you can even find the most popular clips from Tiny Ashes on YouTube (here), you really have no need to line up for the DVD, scheduled to be released in the United States on January 26, 2010. But, you can take a cue from all those men who for decades have been buying Playboy just for the articles and say that you are just doing historical research. Afterwards, you can say you were so engrossed in the art and politics of the film that you did not even notice that you were seeing more of Robert Pattinson than you had ever seen in (or by) Twilight.

Sources:

Little Asheswebsite
Little Ashes on Internet Movie Database
Little Ashes on Rotten Tomatoes (where it has a 24% rating)
Little Ashes on Wikipedia
Other resources linked to earlier in the article
Index to my film reviews