“Mapplethorpe,” directed by Ondi Timoner, is a fictionalized biography of the photographer that is most alive when it’s putting its subject’s pictures on the screen, which it does often. And should have done more, because the movie is otherwise as timid as its subject was bold.
Beginning with young Mapplethorpe in uniform as an ROTC cadet at Pratt, it cuts to some “New York City! Wow!” archival footage before the rebellious Robert meets cute with the poet Patti. The alliance between Mapplethorpe and the future rock star Patti Smith was movingly memorialized and mythologized by Smith herself in the 2010 book “Just Kids.” It came as both a surprise, and maybe not so much of one, to be informed in its pages that Smith was the practical one in the relationship. For all that, the art-worshipping duo were fierce nonconformists.
“Mapplethorpe” does something I thought impossible: It makes Smith and Mapplethorpe kind of boring. The scene in which they dance together to a Tim Hardin record could be dropped into the middle of an episode of “This Is Us” and you’d never know the difference. (Patti is played, with a blandness that’s near-hilarious, by Marianne Rendón.)
The movie soon settles into a conventional “and then this happened” structure. Robert expands his sexual parameters, Robert gets a Polaroid camera, Robert meets Sam Wagstaff, who is to become a lover and patron, and so on.
In its respect for Mapplethorpe the artist, or maybe because of something less salutary, the movie hogties itself into passivity, never bothering to turn Robert into any kind of character. Viewers familiar with Mapplethorpe’s work are expected to sit up and say “Foreshadowing!” when Robert asks Sandy Daley, who gives him that Polaroid, “Can I take a picture of your flowers?”
But other than that, the script, by Timoner and Mikko Alanne (adapted from a prior screenplay by Bruce Goodrich), avoids creative extrapolation with respect to Mapplethorpe’s inner life. This gives Matt Smith, in the title role, not a lot to do. The English actor has a physical resemblance to the film’s subject and is clearly both game and able, so that’s a shame.
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‘Mapplethorpe’ is not rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.