‘Late Fame’ review: Willem Dafoe beguiles as a rediscovered genius

In pop culture, there’s something deeply compelling about the idea of a ‘forgotten genius’ whose talent has been rediscovered. The trope blossomed in the early 2010s, just before the combination of social media and smartphone ubiquity made it harder for anyone to disappear from view (see the 2012 Rodriguez documentary Searching For Sugarman and indie rocker Richard Katz in Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel Freedom). What if things had been slightly different for a gifted artist who never quite made it? READ MORE: The best films of 2026… so far! Late Fame, director Kent Jones’ second narrative feature, applies this evocative question to a fictional New York poet who knocked about with the likes of Allen Ginsberg in the 1970s. In the present day, Ed Saxberger, played with craggy charm by Willem Dafoe, works at the post office and hasn’t written a poem for decades. Like the arty and experimental downtown New York in which he plied his literary trade, Saxberger’s creative life is a thing of the past. Now, when he’s not sorting the mail, he hangs out in a local bar with his ageing, blue-collar buddies, who know nothing about his masterful 1979 collection Way Past Go. That’s until he’s appro...