"Problemista" celebrates the stubborn will of the artist

If you’re reading this, then I probably don’t need to introduce myself to you. You know me from my published writing, or my podcast, or maybe we went to school together. For one reason or another, you’ve taken enough of an interest in my work to follow me here from wherever you found me.

So, to begin with, thank you.

I’ve taken to self-publishing because, as you may know, the world of online media criticism is pretty volatile right now. Outlets are getting shut down as corporations contract, and the freelance marketplace is getting flooded with talented writers at the same time that surviving publications are slashing their freelance budgets. I’m fortunate enough to get hired to review a few movies and shows each month, but there are many more new releases that I’m not hired to write about for Observer or Polygon. Rather than simply not writing about those things, as if it isn’t worth the effort without the promise of immediate payment, I’ve decided to write them anyway and to share them here. Sometimes they’ll be free, and sometimes they’ll require a subscription to read, because I am a gerbil on a wheel and that wheel is connected to a little machine that feeds my 16-month-old son and the way I keep the wheel turning is by typing on this keyboard until I die. This is a life that I chose on purpose.

As it turns out, I could not have picked a better film with which to start this project than Problemista, the feature directorial debut of actor, former SNL writer, and Los Espookys creator Julio Torres. Problemista follows a young aspiring toy designer, Alejandro (Torres), who has immigrated to New York from El Salvador to pursue a spot in Hasbro’s “talent incubator.” When he loses his job looking after a cryogenically frozen artist (RZA), a desperate Alejandro clings to the artist’s widow, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), becoming her assistant in the hopes that she’ll sponsor his work visa and allow him to stay in the country long enough to land the job he really wants.

But Elizabeth isn’t any ordinary high-society art critic/archivist of her cryogenically frozen husband’s outsider art - he’s a dynamo of nervous energy with the will and patience of a toddler. She has no idea how the world works but has the terrifying ability to bend people and situations into her desired shape, usually by screaming until the world gives her what she wants. She survives by assuming a position of status over each person with whom she comes into contact, throwing a fit, and ensuring that giving in to her the path of least resistance. It’s not an act; She’s not feigning offense in order to guilt people into submission. She really is that delicate, and she’s able to remain so because no one dares to push back at her. But, through persistence, that weakness becomes her strength. She’s the wind, a weightless thing that can demolish a building.

By contrast, Alejandro is a rubber ball, something that’s tough but whose nature is to bounce off of walls rather than break them, to maintain its momentum without disturbing its surroundings. He navigates the broken US immigration system by assuming complete deference to everyone he encounters, from his boss at the cryo-freezing lab to the aspiring actor who sublets his bedroom and then never once sleeps there. He is angry, tired, and frustrated, but he puts on a calm face because God forbid he should make anyone feel uncomfortable for exploiting his good nature. He works constantly, grinding away at a game that can only be won by cheating.

The one thing that Elizabeth and Alejandro have in common is the one thing that’s lacking in everyone else they know: single-minded dedication to their ridiculous art. Elizabeth is obsessed with putting on a prestigious solo art exhibit for her frozen husband’s paintings, which are all unremarkable paintings of eggs. Alejandro wants to design toys for Hasbro, but all of his design ideas read more like bizarre, ennui-inspiring art pieces, like a slinky that refuses to descend stairs. Life has offered them both opportunities to do something easier or more practical, and each time, they refuse. This is their purpose, and they will go to any lengths to fulfill it. They still drive each other insane — mostly due to Elizabeth’s inability to digest anything that clashes with her belief that everyone in the world is out to get her — but it does bond them together. They don’t fully understand each other, but they do see each other, and that’s a rarity for both of them.

While Elizabeth learns, unsurprisingly, very little over the course of the story, Alejandro comes to understand the value of her irrational stubbornness. The real world is full of rigid, impersonal systems designed to chew and swallow the underprivileged. If Alej accepts their reality, he loses by default. This isn’t the case for Elizabeth, whose rage is blind and pointless, but she rejects the world anyway, raging at it until it gives in to her demands. Alejandro finds that he could use a little of that delusion. In fact, for an artist, it may even be a necessity.

Problemista is occasionally a little too cute for its own good. Julio Torres generously employs fantasy sequences and magical realism to physically manifest the abstract challenges of Alejandro’s life. Some of these manifestations are terrific, like when Larry Owens portrays a personification of Craigslist in the style of the Cheshire Cat. Others are a hair too twee, like when Alejandro becomes a literal knight in shining armor to combat the hydra Elizabeth. Torres’ own lead performance is occasionally too sketchy (which here means “like from a comedy sketch”) for its own good. Alejandro walks like Mandark from Dexter’s Laboratory, taking small, bouncy steps with his arms bent at the elbow, his hands folded in front of him like a shy tyrannosaurus. It’s cute at first, but it’s a bit dissonant when we’re asked to take him seriously.

Problemista isn’t much for subtlety, but we live in an exaggerated age. We don’t even get reserved naturalism from the news, let alone social satire. As much as it occasionally feels too on the nose, I recognize the intent and I think it works more often than it doesn’t.

But (and maybe it has more to do with the state of mind in which I’m writing) what I appreciate most about Problemista is what it has to say about the nature of art and artists. Torres defines an artist as someone who sees obstacles as opportunities, and can never be satisfied without them. No group is a monolith and I’m sure this will clash with some artists’ philosophies, but I see a lot of truth in it. There’s a perception that artists are flighty people who don’t want to work their lives away like those rubes in those tall buildings. Some artists deliberately curate that relaxed image, because they like being the envy of “normal” people. But truthfully, though the work itself may not be backbreaking, to choose a career in the arts is to choose to make your own life more difficult, and to repeat that choice over and over again.

And frankly, it should be that way. It’s not just that if it were easy, everyone would do it. The art world’s resistance to generative AI isn’t only that it’ll cost us all our jobs, it’s that what it generates is boring and lousy because no work went into it. Nothing great has ever been created on autopilot. George Martin and the Beatles could’ve kept producing A Hard Day’s Night over and over and still had hit records, but instead, they reinvented music production multiple times. Nobody was sure how to make Star Wars, or The Matrix, or The Incredibles when they started making them, but rather than simplify their vision, they developed new technology to realize it. Practically anyone who’s ever created a masterwork has done it in the face of adversity, teetering on the edge of failure, fighting against the clock, squeezing as much as they can out of that last dollar.

Problemista celebrates the collision between the stubborn will of an artist and the hardness of the real world, the friction that strikes the spark of life.

Next week: Love Lies Bleeding. Subscribe to this Patreon to read my next review!