05 Sep 2026
issue 05 September 2026
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Late Fame stars Willem Dafoe as a postal worker whose single book of poetry – published nearly 50 years earlier – is rediscovered by a coterie of young fans who declare him ‘a genius’. It’s a tragicomedy – a satire on literary self-regard – that also manages to be exquisitely tender, delicate and a deeply layered character study. Dafoe is wonderful and, for once, is centre stage, playing a regular guy rather than some supporting-character weirdo. You can read everything on Dafoe’s face – a face that seems to have more bones than is needed in a face. It’s a face that renders the script hardly necessary.
The film is based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (the Austrian-Jewish author who also wrote the book that inspired Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut) that was written in 1895 but not published until 2014 – so late fame, it can happen. (Fascinating author, fascinating story, look him up; Nazis are involved.)
