Magritte fascinates me as few artists do. The fascination I have with him is in a way similar to the one I hold for Belgium, which may look apparently as one of the most calm, peaceful and even boring countries in the world, but if you walk it and try to feel it for a while you discover mysteries of unexpected beauty, styles of life and art which renew despite starting from apparent banal things, a unique sense of humor and an air of fantastic emanating from things and places. Similarly, the art of Magritte creates tension and mystery from the day to day objects, painted in the most realistic and bourgeois manner, but always set in a way that makes the viewer feel that they are part of an intensively true dreaming experience.
Director Henri de Gerlache did not make the mistake to try to do a routine documentary about the painter. There are many written, photographed and film materials about Magrite and an extensive biographical film can be made at any time. What de Gerlache did is to write a short script based on the idea of a research by an actor of the personality of Magritte. Charlie Dupont does not even look close physically like Magritte, so he had to do a good job (and he succeeded) in order to bring to screen the internal life of the painter and the motivation of the different decisions he took in his life and in his art. The result is a documentary which looks differently than the usual polite biography, but still is informative and succeeds to bring a closer a little from understanding the secrets of Magritte. We will never get to the point to understand him to the end, as dreams do not always translate directly and completely to reality, but we can try to get closer.
