Directed by: Casey Affleck
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck
Rating: NR

Joaquin Phoenix stars in I’m Still Here, a documentary about himself. (Courtesy photo)

Joaquin Phoenix, who famously retired from acting right after giving a critically-acclaimed performance in 2005's Walk the Line, has since fallen from grace into a world of drugs, alienation, and mountain-man beards. I'm Still Here, directed by Phoenix's best friend and brother-in-law, Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone, Ocean's Eleven), tries to blame his decline on the media and on a life spent in front of cameras, an argument that falls flat because the only evidence behind it is sentimental.

Affleck, new to the directing world, chronicles Phoenix's new life in this documentary. The retired actor assumes a new name, "JP," to accompany his new rap music career. He stops shaving. He drinks, smokes, snorts cocaine, curses more than Joe Pesci did in GoodFellas. He demands to be taken seriously, while in the meantime his steadily protruding belly becomes a character in its own right. His assistants have had all they can take, but stick around anyway (with one eventually carrying out an act of repulsive revenge on the former actor). With appearances from everyone from Ben Stiller (There's Something About Mary) to P. Diddy to Edward James Olmos (Stand and Deliver), the film follows an essentially tragic personality down the path of enlightenment or, more accurately, inebriation.

I wouldn't call this a sad movie, though. It's actually a comedy. Sure, there are moments when we feel pity—not sympathy—for JP, like when he sits silently at his father's table, clearly ashamed at what he has become. But the majority of this movie is preposterous, unintentional humor. P. Diddy earns my vote for best actor of the movie, successfully keeping a straight face while JP's demo CD blares throughout the room in profanity-ridden monotone. (On a side note, JP is a truly terrible rapper. I don't know much about rap, but I know of rhythm and rhyme. Evidently, JP understands neither concept.) It's tempting to think this is a "mockumentary," much like a This Is Spinal Tap for the rap world. But Joaquin is dead serious. Even when David Letterman quips, "Joaquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight," JP sits solemnly behind his giant sunglasses, his pride genuinely hurt.

Affleck and Phoenix want us to think the media is what turned Phoenix into what he is, that he is "tortured" because of always being in the spotlight. I just don't buy the argument, though. Saying again and again that Joaquin Phoenix was transformed into a bum by the press doesn't make it true. If anything, we're less inclined to believe that excuse because the people who support it most are only Phoenix's closest friends, who also happen to be consistently drunk or high.

If you ignore the movie's main argument, which is easy enough, and try to piece together the Joaquin Phoenix mystery yourself, the film becomes much more worthwhile. I, for one, would say that Phoenix chose to go down this path. Several times in the movie he claims to know where he is in life and what he wants to do. As pathetic as it is, it seems he truly believes that there is something inevitable about combining drugs and alcohol and sex with his new music career, and that choosing this path brought sin with it, not that he brought sin to his new lifestyle.

Even harder to know is whether the whole JP persona is a hoax. JP denies any such publicity stunt, but the more he denies, the more we're inclined to think he adopted the character in order to make this movie. If it is true, it's a fascinating look into the world of celebrity madness. While it tries, and fails, to adequately answer the main question, "why do normal celebrities go off the deep end?"—it's a question better left open to interpretation. There is no definite reason for his insanity. I can't say for sure what made him undergo this inconceivable transformation, or what makes any celebrity go crazy, but I'm Still Here at least gives us a firsthand account of what the process looks like. And it's ugly.

Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School, where he was a member of the Drama Society and the Academic Bowl team. He is a student at the University of Pennsylvania.