Late Fame which premiered a year ago this month at the Venice Film Festival is a gem. It is a movie about, among other things, discovery and rediscovery. It may be a year after critics first saw this movie that I am only just discovering it myself as it begins its theatrical engagements, but if ever there was a beguiling and enlightening film hiding in plain sight it is this one from director Kent Jones (Diane) and Oscar nominated screenwriter Samy Burch (May December).
Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1890’s novella, Burch has modernized it and changed the Vienna setting to New York City’s Soho district, a once bustling enclave for artists and poets, and now something quite different. Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) has worked for the post office for 37 years, but in the late 70’s he was a published poet with a brief dance with notoriety, a couple of articles written about his modest papaerback book, now relegated to the back shelves of a dusty private bookstore, if you can even find it there. Meyers (Edmund Donovan) the leader of a young group of men with respect for those who came before and whose little salon competes with “influencers” tied to their iPhones in the same space, has indeed discovered Saxberger and intends to make him the group’s next project, an excavation of greatness somehow passed over but ripe for renewal.
Setting out to find Saxberger, he encounters this modest man whose current social interactions are with blue collar work colleagues at the local bar and a peaceful existence in his modest apartment. Friends only know Ed as a fellow postal worker, certainly not as a man who once wrote poems with the gift of Frost. But that was another life, another time, and so when Meyers invites Ed to his group it is meant with some resistance. He can’t even fathom how this guy even could find his book, much less want to praise it. Nevertheless he shows up and thus begins his relationship with the self-called Enthusiasm Society, a gathering of twenty-something admirers, if not much else, who call themselves intellectuals and reject technology in favor of art and poetry. Indeed their recognition of him as a kind of genius eventually wins over Ed who begins to remember the love for creativity that once drove his life in a very different era, a lost New York where art was prized.
And there also is Gloria (Greta Lee), the older female friend of the Enthusiasm Society, an actress and singer and somewhat tragic, if flamboyant personality whom they have also latched on to. Ed finds something in common with her, even if they are the exact opposites in demeanor. By her very nature she begins to light up his life especially when she agrees to perform his poetry at a show the Society is going to produce, one advertising new poetry from this lost genius.
What makes this film work as well as it does, even if inspired by material from well over a century ago, is first and foremost a truly splendid cast. Dafoe continues to be a miracle of an actor, never overplaying his hand here and believably embodying a man resigned to a different life than what might have been, a richly talented writer of long ago suddenly reawakened after putting it all in the past. His skepticism is real and so is his awareness that these new found admirers may not see him for who he really is and what his poetry is really about. Lee, so fine in a wide variety of roles from Past Lives to The Morning Show, is superb as a woman playing a role in life as well as piano bars. Fortunately she is no stereotype here as Gloria is a genuine talent herself, an exceptional performer as she proves singing Brecht and Weill’s “Surabaya Johnny” in a beautiful moment with Ed in the audience recognizing he is also seeing someone deserving of late fame herself. Unfortunately she has demons and Lee is truly stunning in a role that runs the gamut. Donovan is perfect as the leader of a group who essentially adopts artists for their own sense of worth.
Burch’s brilliantly witty, biting, and all-knowing screenplay never satirizes these characters or looks down on them in a movie Jones and his exceptional actors have blessed with sheer humanity and grace.
Producers are Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, Mason Plotts, Danny Roberts
H.S. Naji, Jackie Langelier, Taylor Shung, Ethan Lazar.
Title: Late Fame
Distributor: Magnolia
Release Date: August 7, 2026
Director: Kent Jones
Screenplay: Samy Burch
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, Edmund Donovan, Jake Lacy, Clay Singer, Clark Johnson, Luca Padovan, Arthur Langlie, Graham Campbell, Tony Torn.
Running Time: 1 hour and 36 minutes
