The Christophers – Art, Authenticity, Legacy
Genre: Black Comedy / Crime / Drama | Country: United States, United Kingdom | Language: English | Released: September 7, 2025 (TIFF), April 10, 2026 (US)
8/12/20265 min read
Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers begins with a deceptively simple question: what happens to an artist's work when the artist is no longer interested in protecting it? The answer is an unusual, funny and sometimes melancholy film about art, legacy, regret, authenticity and the human need to be understood.
Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a once-celebrated painter who has withdrawn from the art world and now lives surrounded by the remains of his former life. His unfinished paintings, known as The Christophers, are potentially worth a great deal of money. His children see them as an opportunity, while Lori, a young artist with her own complicated relationship with the art world, becomes involved in their plans. From this setup, Soderbergh creates a chamber piece that is less interested in the mechanics of forgery than in what art means to the people who make it, inherit it and eventually look at it.
Julian is a fascinating character because he is deeply concerned with authenticity. He has strong opinions about art, artists and what constitutes genuine artistic achievement. Yet the irony is that the more fiercely he defends authenticity in art, the less authentic he seems to have become as a person. He has spent so many years being Julian Sklar, the famous painter, that the public image has almost replaced the man. His reputation has become another canvas, carefully constructed and constantly defended. That makes his relationship with Lori particularly interesting. Both have been wounded by people whose opinions about art mattered too much to them. Julian has lived with the judgment and expectations that accompany artistic fame, while Lori carries the consequences of having had her own artistic confidence undermined. Their conversations therefore have an emotional weight that goes beyond the paintings. They are, in different ways, trying to determine whether they can still trust their own judgment.
One of the film's funniest ideas arrives when Julian begins experimenting with ways of making his paintings deliberately bad. Glue, feathers and other materials are thrown into the process as though he is trying to sabotage the very idea of serious art. But the experiment produces an unexpected result: even when Julian attempts to make something worthless, his instincts as an artist keep getting in the way. This is where the wonderfully strange phrase "the destruct is the construct" begins to make sense. Destruction becomes creation. By trying to dismantle the value of the work, Julian ends up making another artistic statement. More importantly, he seems to rediscover something that has been missing from his life—the simple pleasure of making something. For years, Julian has been concerned with whether art is important, authentic or valuable. Here, he is simply playing with a canvas. There is no grand artistic mission and no guarantee that anybody will admire the result. The act itself becomes important. The film suggests that creativity can come from instinct and play as much as from discipline and intention.
That idea connects to one of the larger questions in The Christophers: who decides what art is worth? The answer is not as straightforward as the art market would like us to believe. A painting can have enormous financial value because it carries the name of a famous artist. Another work might have little monetary value but have an enormous emotional impact on the person who encounters it. One person may see an investment, another may see a historical document, while somebody else may simply see something beautiful. The film is interested in all these possibilities without pretending that one definition of value is enough. Art begins between the artist and the canvas, but it cannot remain there. For art to have a life beyond the studio, it has to reach the public eye. Someone has to see it, question it, appreciate it, learn from it or be moved by it. That is where the artist loses control. Once you put something into the world, you can't control what it means to another person. This is particularly important in a film about unfinished paintings. We tend to think of an unfinished artwork as incomplete and therefore somehow deficient. But perhaps incomplete does not always mean unfinished. If a painting has already conveyed its meaning, provoked a response or moved someone, does another brushstroke necessarily make it more complete?
The Christophers leaves room for that possibility. The value of a work may not depend entirely on whether the artist believes it has reached perfection. Sometimes the person looking at it completes the experience. That idea also changes the way we think about artistic legacy. Julian spends much of the film surrounded by people who have very different ideas about what should happen to his work. His children think about its financial possibilities. The art world thinks about reputation and authenticity. The artist himself has his own complicated feelings about what he has created. But no artist can completely determine their legacy. A person's legacy is not something they can completely control. It is shaped by the people who encounter their work after it has left their hands. A painting can be interpreted differently decades after it was made. It can influence someone the artist never met. It can become valuable for reasons the artist never anticipated. It can even mean more to another person than it ever meant to its creator. That gives the film an unexpectedly human dimension. Beneath all the discussions about paintings and money is a story about people who want to be seen and understood. Julian's bitterness is partly the result of having spent too long living inside other people's expectations. His need for recognition has become tangled with his need for connection. The same is true, in a different way, for Lori.
Soderbergh keeps the film deliberately intimate. There is no attempt to turn the story into a conventional art-world thriller. Instead, the film allows conversations, awkward silences, eccentric behaviour and small moments of humour to carry the story. This makes The Christophers feel more like a conversation about art than a film about an art heist. The music contributes considerably to that atmosphere. David Holmes uses bass, bells and keyboard textures to give the film an unusual combination of mystery, playfulness and melancholy. The low bass gives certain scenes a quiet pulse, while the bells and keys add a slightly offbeat quality. It works particularly well because the movie itself moves between comedy and sadness. The sound never insists that a moment is profound; it simply creates an atmosphere in which the characters' loneliness and eccentricity can coexist.
The film ultimately asks us to think about what remains when the artist's authority is removed. If the artist cannot explain the work, if the market cannot agree on its value, and if different viewers interpret it differently, does the art become less meaningful—or does it finally become free? That is what makes The Christophers more interesting than a straightforward story about forgery. It is not really asking whether a painting is genuine. It is asking what "genuine" even means when art becomes part of another person's life.
Why Watch It?
The main reason to watch The Christophers is Ian McKellen. His performance as Julian is fantastic, particularly because he never reduces the character to either a lovable eccentric or an unpleasant old man. Julian can be vain, cruel, funny, childish, lonely and surprisingly vulnerable, sometimes within the same scene. McKellen understands that the character's arrogance is partly armour, and he allows the sadness underneath it to emerge without turning the performance sentimental.
The film is also worth watching for its ideas. It takes questions that can sound academic—authenticity, artistic value, authorship, legacy—and turns them into personal conflicts between people. The "destruct is the construct" idea, the deliberately damaged paintings, the question of who decides what art is worth, and the distinction between something being incomplete and actually unfinished all give the film plenty to think about after the credits.
Most importantly, The Christophers understands something fundamental about art: the artist may begin the conversation, but does not get to finish it. Art has to leave the canvas and reach another person. It can move them, educate them, inspire them or simply make them stop and look. And once it does, its meaning is no longer entirely the artist's to control. That may be the film's most lasting idea. An artist creates the work, but those who encounter it shapes its legacy.