Johnny Depp’s ‘Modi’ chronicles art, addiction and a painter’s doomed passion

In 2018, an oil painting of a nude by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani broke a world record when it sold at Sotheby’s for $157.2 million. It was created in 1917, during a time when Modigliani struggled to sell his work for more than a few francs.

Johnny Depp’s new film Modi: Three Days on the Wings of Madness explores the artist’s struggle for recognition and the tension between his idealism and commercial pressures.

The film delves into Modigliani’s mental instability, worsened by tuberculosis and self-medication. He turned to hashish and alcohol, including absinthe. Depp’s direction doesn’t shy away from the hallucinations and horrors that plagued him as his illness progressed.

Set in 1916 Paris during World War I, the film spans three intense days and draws from Modigliani – A Play in Three Acts by Dennis McIntyre, staying close to the original plot.

The story revolves around Modigliani’s friendships with artists Chaïm Soutine (Ryan McParland) and Maurice Utrillo (Bruno Gouery), his volatile romance with English writer Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat), and his relationship with art dealer Léopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham). Zborowski arranges a meeting with wealthy collector Maurice Gangnat (Al Pacino), a pivotal moment.

Riccardo Scamarcio delivers an energetic performance as Modigliani, portraying him as both a tormented genius and a slave to addiction—a role that may mirror Depp’s own past.

Depp’s direction keeps the film moving briskly. In one scene, Modigliani crashes through a stained-glass window. In another, he sets a painting on fire to spite buyers. Later, he destroys sculptures and slashes canvases in a fit of rage.

The title Modì—his nickname—is also a pun on the French word maudit, meaning cursed. As a young man, Modigliani was influenced by philosopher Nietzsche, whose blurred lines between reality and dreaming are mirrored in the film’s hallucinatory visuals.

Modigliani masks his pain with alcohol, drinking in Montmartre’s Bateau Lavoir with Soutine and Utrillo. Soutine, like Modigliani, was a Jewish outsider. In 1916, both lived in adjacent studios in La Ruche, a rough artist colony. Soutine endured severe poverty, depression, and anxiety, all of which shaped his art.

Utrillo also battled mental illness, taking up painting to combat depression. Unable to enlist during the war, he spent time in hospitals and painted Parisian scenes from postcards.

Modigliani attempted to enlist too, but poor health disqualified him. This memory triggers a hallucination in the film—grotesquely injured soldiers and a plague doctor haunting him.

After these visions, Modigliani turns to Beatrice, who acts as both lover and caretaker. She pushes him toward practicality, frustrated that he’s “constantly running from death.”

She is depicted as his muse, though the reclining nude and sculpted head shown in the film are fictionalized for dramatic effect.

The film climaxes with Modigliani’s disastrous meeting with Gangnat. Yet he declares: “I am much richer than you, Monsieur Gangnat… You have merely existed…I have lived.”

While the film may sensationalize, Modigliani’s life indeed mirrored tragedy. He died in 1920 at 35. Two days later, his pregnant partner Jeanne Hébuterne took her life. Only after his death was his genius fully recognized.