{"id":32956,"date":"2026-08-08T18:16:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T13:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=32956"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:16:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T13:16:25","slug":"willem-dafoe-shines-as-a-postal-worker-and-poet-in-the-luminous-late-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=32956","title":{"rendered":"Willem Dafoe Shines as a Postal Worker and Poet in the Luminous Late Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<section>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/blt38cb2b89f557e0ae\/6a74daf72378b25b103e96ef\/5_(1).jpg?branch=production\" \/><figcaption>Willem Dafoe in &#8216;Late Fame&#8217; \u2014Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<p>How many lives can be packed into one? If we live long enough, most of us reinvent ourselves several times over, by switching careers, changing partners, having children, moving to a new place. What constitutes the essence of <em>us,<\/em> even when we can no longer identify ourselves as the thing we used to be?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one of the questions Kent Jones\u2019 intimate, wry little picture <em>Late Fame<\/em> tangles with. <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/5714746\/willem-dafoe-the-lighthouse-interview\/\" target=\"_self\">Willem Dafoe<\/a> plays Ed Saxberger, a seventy-ish New York City postal worker who used to be, or may still be, a poet: In 1979 he published a reasonably well-received book of poetry\u2014a pretty admirable feat by itself\u2014but now he\u2019s just a guy. By day he sorts letters; in the evenings he wanders down to his local watering hole to hang out with his geezer pals, MTA workers and the like, guys who do everyday jobs just like he does. As far as they\u2019re concerned, there\u2019s nothing fancy or special about him. He\u2019s not just a regular, he\u2019s regular.<\/p>\n<p>For Saxberger, there\u2019s nothing sad about that; it\u2019s just the texture of his life. But one day, he\u2019s alerted to the presence of a wiry, nervous-looking, well-dressed young man who\u2019s been hanging around his modest but by no means depressive apartment building. Saxberger approaches him amiably. The kid introduces himself as Wilson Meyers\u2014he\u2019s played, with clean-cut bonhomie, by Edmund Donovan\u2014and begins to gush over Saxberger\u2019s single book, which he unearthed, he says breathlessly, at \u201cFoyles on Charing Cross Road,\u201d an unnecessary bit of information that telegraphs nearly all you need to know about this guy. Meyers tells Saxberger that he\u2019s part of \u201can artistic community\u201d of poets and intellectuals who gather occasionally at a local speakeasy, and they\u2019re all huge fans of his work. Would he join them sometime? Unsure what, exactly, this crew might want from him, Saxberger at first demurs; then he relents. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/blt53ef760129aeac7b\/6a74daf71440805e95cc279b\/6.jpg?branch=production\" \/><figcaption>A scene Late Fame \u2014Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<p>The members of this group call themselves \u201cThe Enthusiasm Society,\u201d refer to one another by last names only, and claim to loathe internet influencers. They\u2019re mostly aimless and obviously well-off guys in their twenties and early thirties, fellows who clearly think it\u2019s bourgeois to work and luckily don\u2019t have to. Saxberger appears amused by their callow pretensions\u2014they\u2019re obviously hoping that hanging out with him will somehow turn them into poets too\u2014but he does wonder, and eventually asks: \u201cAre there any women in your group?\u201d There <em>is<\/em> one, they assure him, though he\u2019s not prepared for the bewitching creature who eventually swans in. Gloria (<a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/article\/2026\/06\/10\/greta-lee-toy-story-5-interview\/\" target=\"_self\">Greta Lee<\/a>), a performer in every sense of the word, seems to have dropped in from another century. Her sentences tumble out in breathy, peacock-feather bouquets; she favors swirling capes and flirtatious, oddball cloches. She invites Saxberger to one of her intimate cabaret performances\u2014she slinks through \u201cSurabaya Johnny\u201d with molten eroticism\u2014and he watches in awe. She\u2019s both unbearable in her excessive theatricality and unavoidably captivating. Saxberger is a goner. But then he also wonders, years after having given up writing, if he may still be a poet after all.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s the central rib of <em>Late Fame,<\/em> which was adapted from a long lost and only recently published 1895 novella by Arthur Schnitzler. What makes a poet? Is it the act of writing, or a subterranean, unextinguishable quality that lives in the soul? <em>Late Fame<\/em> is Jones&#8217; second fiction feature\u2014his debut was the gentle-spirited 2018 drama <em>Diane, <\/em>starring Mary Kay Place\u2014and though it\u2019s deeply observant about what it takes, and what it costs, to be an artist, it also has the light touch of a comedy. Characters who begin as types gradually emerge as people: Donovan\u2019s Meyers is the kind of spoiled rich kid who proves how easy it is to be a dilettante when you\u2019ve got daddy\u2019s dollars behind you\u2014and still, there\u2019s something sad about the way he grabs greedily at others\u2019 gifts, because he knows what\u2019s lacking in himself. Dafoe is terrific as Saxberger, a guy who\u2019s made peace with what his life has become, only to find himself rattled by the idea that maybe he hasn&#8217;t. A scene in which he tries to introduce his bar pals to his old poetry cuts deep: they laugh because they can\u2019t see him as anyone but their drinking buddy (though it\u2019s also pointed out that he no longer drinks alcohol, for reasons we can intuit). Dafoe\u2019s face, a map of scarred-over disappointments, shows him reckoning with a brutal truth: he&#8217;ll have to learn to live with the fact that these people he truly cares about can never truly understand him.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/bltc25a8be8c8064b06\/6a74dad156fcaa687f42153b\/1_(1).jpg?branch=production\" \/><figcaption>Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in Late Fame \u2014Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<p>But Lee\u2019s performance may be the secret key to <em>Late Fame. <\/em>Gloria is a user, a poseur extraordinaire; her fluttery flamboyance, rooted in insecurity, summons <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/4636897\/photographs-1949-sunset-boulevard\/\" target=\"_self\">another Gloria<\/a>, the one from <em>Sunset Blvd. <\/em>And yet she\u2019s the only member of the Enthusiasm Society who has ever taken a risk\u2014as well as, clearly, the only one with any true artistic gift. As Lee plays her, she shifts seamlessly from hypertheatrical creation to fragile human being. And though other members of the group desire her, only Saxberger\u2014intoxicated with her even though he knows it\u2019s hopeless\u2014sees the truth of her. <em>Late Fame<\/em> is all about the bitter, beautiful reality that no one is ever who they used to be. How could we be, if we\u2019re doing the work of <em>becoming?<\/em> Is Saxberger still a poet, even when he finds it impossible to write new verse? What he and only he sees in Gloria is a new kind of poem, written on the wind if not on paper, but real even so. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Willem Dafoe in &#8216;Late Fame&#8217; \u2014Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures How many lives can be packed into one? If we live long enough, most of us reinvent ourselves several times over, by switching careers, changing partners, having children, moving to a new place. What constitutes the essence of us, even when we can no longer identify&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/blt38cb2b89f557e0ae\/6a74daf72378b25b103e96ef\/5_(1).jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}