Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

What the ceaseless pursuit of artistic realism does to a motherfucker… So much to appreciate here. Two men bickering over immortality and dinner, one insisting on the greatness of his young, “scientific” artform, the other looking back on his decline from mythic greatness in bitter, hungry senility. Art as an obsession that may satsify only the one who creates it, by freeing them from it. The confusion and construction of reality from discontinuous fragments of memory and meaning. I think what I like most is how the film never denies the pure tragicomedy of its own premise-the melancholy of Dracula, the delights of schnapps and bats, the monster playing an actor and so on.