F is for Fake

 I thought this film was a really interesting watch. From the beginning, you can tell they want the audience to be thinking about what is real and what is fake throughout the film. I personally don't agree with the notion of creating forgeries of people's art. While the film brings up the idea that de Hory's fakes could have technically been considered his, I just don't feel like that could be the case. I think all art is inspired by other art, but when an artist is creating an exact replica of someone else's work, I don't think that qualifies what they've created as truly theirs. What I mean to say is that de Hory was certainly a talented artist, and while his skills were put on display through his different "fake" artworks, at the end of the day he only created replicas of other people's work; he didn't make any new or authentic art of his own accord. I think if he had created works inspired by the artist's he copied from, or even changed a few elements from other pieces, then his artwork could be considered truly his. 

I also thought the end of the film was an interesting twist to what we had just seen. At the beginning, Welles mentions that everything that would be discussed in the next hour of the film would be true, and as people get invested in the storytelling taking place, they don't realize the time passing during the film. By the time we arrive to Kodar's part of the story, the hour has already passed by, and the tale presented of her relationship with Picasso is revealed to be made up, as it is told after the hour has passed. 

Overall, I enjoyed watching this film. I think it was really clever and a good way to tell the story of de Hory, as well as prompt the audience to contemplate what is really "real" or "fake", as well as what constitutes creative operations like paintings and artworks and who they really belong to.