Tag Archives: #Melbourne

The Room

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James Franco’s well received and highly entertaining comedy The Disaster Artist has given a new lease of life to the egregious film The Room which it deftly lampoons.

The Room has a longstanding reputation as the worst film ever made. Written, directed, starring and self-produced by the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau, it was made on a budget of $6 million. The film was then shown at one theatre only taking $1,800 with a prominent sign from management advising No Refunds would be given.

Then a few years after disappearing without trace, and in a twist similar to the plot of The Producers, it began to be shown in midnight screenings and gained an audience of people curious to see how bad the film could actually be. And it’s bad. Truly, truly bad.

It’s near impossible to critique the film – everything about it is awful. I’ll mention only the plot strands started then swiftly abandoned and the truly cringeworthy dialogue, especially from the female characters, and leave it at that.

But that’s the fun of it. Last night, early this morning I watched it at a sold-out theatre of 200, most, if not all of whom, had visited Carlton’s fashionable bars before heading to the cinema armed with plastic spoons and a few footballs.

The cinema helpfully provided a program explaining the traditional audience interactions which accompany the film: the spoons being thrown at the screen in ever greater number; the chorus of ‘Because you’re a woman’ on hackneyed female dialogue; repeated cries of ‘Alcatraz’ whenever the prison is in shot or Tommy seen behind bars. That’s only a small selection – there are many more. The repeated chants of ‘Do your face, Do your face’ as an actor received fellatio was side-splittingly funny.

It’s pure pantomime and if you go along with the joke, you can’t fail to have a good time. I’ll be going again now I know better where to join in.

And who has the last laugh? Well the film’s now turned a profit so that goes to Tommy Wiseau.

Paddington 2 – No Bear is a Failure Who Has Friends

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Sometimes a film can have a warmth and charm transcending its failings to be thoroughly enjoyable; The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was brim full of corny jokes and a pretty ordinary plot – its reviews in the MSM were at best mediocre. But its solid cast and theme of older people who had not given up on the idea of love and sex touched a chord with a mature audience, and it ended up at number three in the Australian box office in 2012 as word of mouth spread.

When a film has warmth, and charm, and little to no failings, then you have an instant classic.

Everything about Paddington 2 is nigh on pitch perfect; the wonderful cast of British and Irish character actors don’t put a foot wrong; Ben Whishaw’s voice characterisation now the definitive Paddington; the CGI so good you forget the bear’s not real; costume and set design which is inspired; an inventive and amusing plot touched with whimsy; jokes, slapstick and meta, which rarely miss the mark – look out for the calypso version of the Love Thy Neighbour theme song; locations both London and rural which showcase Britain at its very best; an ending inspired by Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.

To make a criticism that the pacing in the second half of the film perhaps fell away just a little at one stage would be like criticising the entire Apollo Space Program for Neil Armstrong’s failure to use the indefinite article when saying ‘That’s one small step for a man’.

And the best thing about the movie is that you’ll leave the cinema with a fuzzy warmth. Guaranteed.

No bear is a failure who has friends.

***** 5 stars

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years

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It’s questionable whether or not The Beatles will ever be matched as a pop culture phenomena. As they returned from their first ground-breaking tour of America, BBC television covered live their arrival home to Britain. The Saturday afternoon sports show Grandstand was jettisoned, its long-standing  presenter David Coleman dispatched to Heathrow to interview the group fresh off the plane. It’s difficult to imagine such coverage for any band ever occurring again.

Snippets of the broadcast were shown at the beginning of Ron Howard’s documentary which promised a story we didn’t know.

Taking a chronological stance the film proceeded to tell the tale of the pleasantly naïve, mop-topped heart throbs transforming into more cynical businessmen touring solely for the wealth it brought them, their record contract giving them only scant royalties. Sadly, as the Fab Four tired of the constant demands of touring and its lack of artistic integrity, the film tired with it.

Most of the footage shown seemed pretty familiar and the film failed to bring many fresh insights into the band or its culture. Some celebrity interviews interspersed throughout the film proved to be a mixed bag. Those telling contemporary tales of how they remembered the tours were more relevant than later era artists putting their hearsay opinions forward.

Ron Howard is all too often an under-rated director but on this occasion, his work does come across as a little slapdash and superficial. It’s difficult not to compare with Martin Scorsese’s far superior, and much longer, doco, George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Scorsese’s film, which was clearly a labour of love for him, was filled with interesting vignettes, treating its subject matter with respect but never falling into hagiography.

The Beatles, quite rightly, occupy a hallowed place in the history of British culture. Their importance exceeds that of Kipling and Elgar, surely on a par with Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. This inconsequential film is pleasant viewing and the music always toe-tapping but it is far from being definitive and lacks gravitas.

The Lady in the Van

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Many years ago I saw, or read, an interview in which Alan Bennett described the difference in getting a play commissioned by the BBC and getting the green light for his first film project.

He detailed how the BBC would seemingly take forever before agreeing a script: putting it through committees, raising objections and queries before finally giving it the nod. On the other hand, the film company had no such qualms signing up his script without a moment’s hesitation.

Then came the rub.

Mr Bennett went onto say that having committed themselves to a piece, the BBC saw it through meticulously without another word. On the contrary, the film company very soon, and very often, started demanding changes: Do you need 20 extras for that scene; does that really need to be shot on the Forth Bridge – wouldn’t Hertfordshire do? He complained that the finished film, the mediocre A Private Function starring Maggie Smith, bore little resemblance to his original script.

Perhaps then it’s no coincidence that his latest film, The Lady in the Van also starring Maggie Smith, is a BBC Films production.

Now, BBC Films itself is not beyond reproach. I’ve been scathing in the past that they allow political proselytising to dominate their films all too often – the dreadfully sanctimonious Salmon Fishing in the Yemen springs all too readily to mind. But there was little danger of that happening with Alan Bennett. Despite being strongly topical, his writing talent is such he allows his storytelling to carry his piece with political and social themes as a strong undercurrent.

The Lady in the Van is a self-acknowledged mostly true story of an elderly itinerant who in 1970 parked up her van in the well-heeled street in which Alan Bennett and other luminaries lived. After a passage of time, she is invited onto Mr Bennett’s drive where she remains for many years.

The film’s themes revolve around society’s attitude to mental illness, the elderly, sexuality and family relationships. In the erudite hands of Alan Bennett it keeps the right side of being thought-provoking rather than preachy.

Maggie Smith is simply wonderful as the eponymous character. It would’ve been all too easy to overact such a role but Maggie Smith is far too good an actor to ham it up. She knows that a withering look or tilt of the head can speak volumes and she uses such devices to devastating effect. Alex Jennings as Alan Bennett has a double role playing both the man and his alter ego, the writer, often in conflict with each other. It’s a neat device which works well. There is much quality in the supporting cast who present interesting characters with whom Alan Bennett has great fun, often presenting them as stereotypes before showing latent depth.

Unfortunately the film has some pacing issues. Director Nicholas Hytner allows the story to lull on more than one occasion, the film meandering and drifting just a little. But he clearly has Alan Bennett’s confidence having directed the film version of The History Boys – most of whose cast appear in one or two line cameo roles.

Let’s hope Alan Bennett, now a sprightly 80 something shown riding his bike at the film’s end, and the BBC can make more material of this quality.

Jobs

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To quote Jeremy Clarkson, I am inspired by bridges not Pentium Processors. But I’m also aware enough to realise that great engineering spectacles are now at least partially designed with the aid of computer technology. With no crystal ball to guide me, I imagine it’s highly probable that the likes of Steve Jobs will one day be held in the high esteem those such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Bazalgette are now.

If it is to happen, it is regrettable that the film biopic Jobs will be of little use to those wishing to understand his legacy. After 122 minutes of this uneven, uninspiring film I was given to understand that the man was a narcissistic ogre who could be a brute, a bully and totally impervious to the feelings and well-being of those in both his personal and professional spheres. What I failed to glean was what drew people to him and why they would stick by him long after he had shafted them.

In the inexplicably over-looked film, Me and Orson Welles, Christian McKay in his Bafta-nominated role shows the charisma and wonderful genius of Welles  who could command the loyalty of his friends and associates despite having the same major character flaws displayed by Jobs.

Unfortunately, Ashton Kutcher’s limitations as a dramatic actor were laid bare in this film. Adopting an exaggerated, lolloping gait, more reminiscent of Roddy McDowall as Galen in Planet of the Apes, was no substitute for a rich and layered performance demonstrating the complexities of the man.  Throughout the film, I was always conscious that I was watching Ashton Kutcher undertaking a skin deep impersonation of Jobs, trying just a little too hard, but failing to convince. He just didn’t nail it.

But it would be wrong to lay the blame for this soggy pudding of a film solely at the feet of its lead actor. Its flaws were many and varied.

The script from Matt Whiteley was episodic and jumped from one facet of Jobs’ life to another with little thought to segue or linking theme. We saw the young Jobs as a college drop out, reject his girlfriend with an intense and deeply spiteful callousness after she told him she was pregnant. Thereafter, he denied paternity even when biological tests and the legal system determined otherwise; he refused to acknowledge his daughter, Lisa. Yet we saw no more of his family life till many years later when he appeared to be happily married with a young son and the now teenage Lisa ensconced in the family home. We were given no idea what had led to this transformation or how, why and when Jobs had embraced his previously rejected daughter. Strangely, the film’s chronology ended prior to the advent of Jobs’ terminal illness – how he dealt with that and how it affected his outlook on the world would surely have been a fascinating insight into the man but the opportunity was left begging.

The film’s script made much of the fact that Jobs wanted innovators, creators, blue sky thinkers – people who would bring something totally left field to his organisation and its products. It was somewhat ironic therefore that direction from Joshua Michael Stern was formulaic and brought nothing new to the genre. The film’s editing was also most untidy although there can be no complaints over the cinematography.

Further films detailing Jobs’ life are apparently in the pipeline. Let’s hope they bring greater clarity to the subject than this plodding, underachieving effort.

**

Tim Meade

 

What Maisie Knew

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There is no point prevaricating or procrastinating.

This is film-making of the highest order.

Adapted from a Henry James novel, written at the end of the nineteenth century, What Maisie Knew is the terribly sad, yet ultimately hopeful story of a young girl, Maisie, who is collateral damage – what used to be called cannon fodder – in her parents’ acrimonious break up. James’s story has been updated to a contemporary setting, the action set in New York rather than London, but the themes remain the same. It’s perhaps best not to dwell on the fact that deep-seated flaws in the human condition have not changed fundamentally in over a century. Better education, travel and information technology may have induced a smug, self-satisfied belief that we are so morally superior to our ancestors, but it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same…

 The film is seen mostly from the confused and inchoate world of seven year old Maisie (Onata Aprile). You rarely hear about what her parents (Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan) argue. All you hear are their rants, often drunken or drug-fuelled, and their vitriolic and foul-mouthed abuse spat at each other in earshot of their daughter whose welfare they both speciously claim to be their only priority. It takes very little time to establish that these two self-consumed people each have only one priority in their respective lives.

The film is at its very best when Julianne Moore is centre stage. This is hardly surprising – she is one of the finest film actors of her generation with a commanding screen presence and always able to bring an edge to her characterisations. With four Oscar nominations on her Résumé already, she can consider herself robbed if this role as a fading rock star fails to garner a fifth.

There is very strong support from both Alexander Skarsgård and Joanna Vanderham as the step-parents who struggle to bring a semblance of stability and compassion to Maisie’s dysfunctional and mentally-battered life. Making her big screen debut, Scottish actor Joanna Vanderham is a charming delight and on this evidence will surely attract more great roles. The very young Onata Aprile is perfectly cast as Maisie, her performance never cloying nor bathetic.

The actors, fine as they are, have also been gifted with a great, tight script from writers Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright who skilfully develop all the film’s protagonists ensuring that they are not two dimensional stereotypes and showing that even the most selfish and shallow can carry a spark of decency. The way supporting actors Skarsgård and Vanderham are allowed to grow their characters from apparently superficial paramours to show they amount to so much more was one of the film’s many highlights.

Billed as joint directors, Scott McGehee and David Siegel are also on top of their game. The film flows naturally, its story and pacing is most even. The use of many close-ups instils an intimacy, and often having the camera at the eye level of a six-year old girl was also most effective; this combination had the effect of drawing the audience in and blurring the fourth wall – several times I turned away, closing my eyes and grimacing, feeling the pain of those I was watching. McGehee and Siegel also demonstrated how very limited use of hand-held camera can enhance a film when used most selectively.

This is simply a film where everything comes together, where everything works and everyone involved can be proud of their efforts. Don’t be put off that the subject matter might, ostensibly, be a little bleak. It goes much deeper than that.

4.5 stars.

 Tim Meade

 

Elysium; Red Obsession

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Elysium

Elysium is the follow up, much anticipated by many, to the critically acclaimed District 9 from South African-Canadian director and writer Neill Blomkamp.

In the middle of the 21st Century, with the world now grossly over-populated and law and order seemingly at breaking point, the super wealthy have decamped to a satellite space station highly visible from earth, a utopian society free of poverty, illness and other such mundane woes.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of earth’s population lives in squalid, cramped slums seemingly based on the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Needless to say, the rich are all too keen to protect their enclave and any unauthorised vessels arriving from earth are duly dispatched by being blasted away.

Jodie Foster stars as Elysium’s ambitious and sociopathic Defence Secretary, as ruthless at advancing her own interests as she is at ensuring the purity of the over-sized Ferris wheel whose security is in her charge; Matt Damon is the working class drone desperately trying to access the other world for the treatment to cure his radiation sickness from which he will die in 5 days.

There was clearly an interesting concept waiting to burst out here, an opportunity to explore themes of wealth, inequality, social status, health care and immigration, but sadly it failed on almost every level to build interest or have anything relevant to say.

First, we saw so little of the societal structure or way of life on Elysium itself. Apart from Jodie Foster and a few other high ranking officials, the film showed us nothing of how this satellite was run. It looked as if everyone lived in a McMansion style-home – the type you find next to golf courses in Florida or on the Sunshine Coast. It all looked terribly sterile, reminiscent of the contrived town Jim Carrey inhabited in The Truman Show. We were not privy as to who cut the lawns, did the plumbing or washed the dishes. Superficially, the lives of these pampered people seemed hollow and totally unfulfilled – where were the galleries, the museums, the theatres or even a casino for those that might like that sort of thing? Frankly, the impoverished life on earth which was shown with enforced work in a fascistic environment seemed far more fulfilling.

Further, Matt Damon’s motives for getting on Elysium were totally selfish. All he wanted was to save his own skin. Granted, there was then concocted an unconvincing love interest and a wish to save his childhood sweetheart’s little girl but this too was just parochial. Where was the burning anger borne from social injustice, the wish to better the lot of all humankind, the working class warrior on a mission? And when the film’s final denouement came it was head in a sick-bag time.

The script and dialogue were banal, as was Jodie Foster’s delivery. Matt Damon worked harder to bring some interest to his character but he was up against it – but at least he tried.

The CGI was good – but that’s pretty much a given in any well-funded Hollywood film these days. Close up camera work was appalling, non-stop wobble vision which made action sequences confusing. This camera style is so unnecessary and it really is beyond comprehension as to why film-makers persist in its use; in small doses it can be effective but when near constant it produces a feeling of nausea.

It is so disappointing to be relentlessly negative about a film but when they are as lacking as this one, the positives can be hard to find.

**

Red Obsession

This is an Australian-produced doco, looking at the history of wines from Bordeaux.

It is 75 minutes long.

After 75 minutes, I was aware that they have been making wines in Bordeaux since the Romans brought the vines; that Napoleon III had the wines graded in 1855 and the grades given remain to this day; that conditions come together for a great vintage about every 20 years; that wine is bought as an investment; that Americans have stopped buying it but the Chinese now do; that some French are sniffily xenophobic about dealing with the Chinese and that if the Chinese ever stop buying, the market may collapse.

Those facts took 75 minutes to explain. 75 very long minutes.

Some nice aerial photography. And looking at beautifully designed and constructed French chateaux is always easy on the eye.

The film had a nice, laconic commentary from Russell Crowe whose smoky, tobacco-enhanced voice fitted the subject well.

But it was all just too superficial, too under-researched with not enough of interest to fill the film’s time span. Some more history would have been welcome; the Great French Wine Blight of the late 1850s post-dated Napoleon III’s gradings – didn’t the blight make them obsolete? This question wasn’t addressed but would seem fundamental to an evaluation of Bordeaux. Still, I’m sure had I gone to France’s bucolic beauty spots to research such a film, I too would have been so distracted drinking the stuff I’d have forgotten .the reason for the visit.

2.5 stars.

Tim Meade

 

 

The Conjuring; Beyond the Hills

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The Conjuring

There were two films out this week each ‘Based on a true story’ and each with an exorcism integral to the plot.

I have before railed against the ‘Based on a true story’ preface – a meaningless expression often given to a film to imbue it with a specious gravitas it might otherwise lack. I suspect that of the two films, the Romanian drama Beyond the Hills had more credence than the Hollywood horror The Conjuring.

With The Conjuring, we immediately seemed to be in familiar territory as the Perron family moved in to their new home – an old and isolated, rambling country house. Just for good measure, they were an all American happy family, save for the surly and truculent eldest teenage daughter, looking forward to a new start in their new home, just bought at auction, about whose history they knew nothing. What could possibly go wrong?

The conventional formula continued as initial strange noises and other slightly odd occurrences were quickly exposed as the normal vagaries of an old and draughty house. But then the tipping point was reached as this nuclear family discovered they were truly in a place of ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.

The Conjuring had its fair share of jump scares but even of these, several were telegraphed as imminent: when you see a guy backing into a house at night after investigating a weird going on outside and there is a window or open door behind him, you can be pretty sure  something is about to go off.

And sadly, apart from the jump scares there was little within the film to instill fear. The direction from James Wan was slack and there was a failure to build tension or suspense; the movie just ambled along.

There was unintentional light relief from the paranormal investigators, or demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren who were called in by the Perrons to help resolve their ghostly issues. The Warrens’ own family home contained a room of artefacts from their previous adventures, the premise for not having destroyed them being rather weak. When their daughter was yet again told that she must not enter the room, I was reminded of The Simpsons episode This Little Wiggy when Chief Wiggum asked of his son, Ralph, ‘What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?’ Needless to say, it wasn’t the last time she encroached into the room.

The film was not without merit; the performances were all adequate and it had a nice early 1970s feel of when it was set. It also didn’t rely on blood and gore in an attempt to shock.

Comparisons have been made with The Exorcist and Poltergeist and they have some similar elements – although the disturbing and enduring fear-inducement of The Exorcist is not one of them. For me, The Conjuring owed more to the classic 1940s Ealing portmanteau Dead of Night where the power of a ventriloquist’s doll and a game of hide and seek leads to the ghost of a child murdered in an earlier century both featured large in its composite story.

I was in a minority. There was a fair amount of shrieking and a palpable feeling of fear within the cinema at the time of my viewing; on the train home, the group of young men and women sat near me were clearly impressed as they related their scariest moments. And by definition, the whole raison d’etre of a horror film is to scare people regardless of whether it’s derivative or not. This one simply failed to scare me.

***

Beyond the Hills

The second film containing an exorcism ‘based on a true story’ this week is the slow-burning and languorous Romanian film Beyond the Hills.

Set predominantly in a monastery in a bleak and poverty-stricken district, it is a complex and multi-layered film revolving around two young women, Alina and Voichita. Previously childhood friends then lovers, their lives intertwine once more when Alina returns from working in Germany in an attempt to again enter into a relationship with Voichita who has since taken Holy Orders and is living the chaste and extremely frugal life of a nun. The rekindling of the relationship was always doomed and as Alina’s mental health deteriorates with the realisation that she will not achieve her objective, she provokes a series of events culminating in the belief by some that she is possessed and needs cleansing.

A Romanian film about faith, despair and unrequited lesbian love in an impoverished monastery was never likely to be an action-packed, sensationalist blockbuster. It is long at 155 minutes and its pace tends to alternate between dead slow and stop. It’s the sort of a film which will take over 5 minutes to show a nun leaving the kitchen to draw water from the well and return to the kitchen with no dialogue or plot advancement throughout that period. But it is a film that has the courage to take its time, confident that it can draw you into the lives of the people whose story it tells. And on the whole it succeeds.

There are no real villains or heroes in the film. It does not take the easy route to mock and blame religion for out-dated belief – when a nun believes she has been sent a sign from God and goes all peculiar, the Orthodox Priest in charge cuts down the hysteria curtly and tells her and the other nuns to move on. No, the people shown in this film, be they doctors, police or those of the cloth, are portrayed as well-meaning  individuals all looking to do no harm even if, like all of us, they can be judgemental and self-righteous on occasion.

Beyond the Hills is an unashamedly bleak and ultimately very sad film which gives no answers but merely records events leaving its audience to draw their own conclusions.

Cinematography was good, though the constant sound of the ever-blowing wind was sometimes crude and off-putting.

And there was an early failure of the sub-titles. When Alina first arrives at the monastery, the camera concentrates on a hand-written sign at its entrance. It’s clearly of some import for it to be shown so, but the audience is not let in on its message. Post-film research ascertained it stated, words to the effect: This is the House of God. Forbidden to those of different religion. You must believe and not doubt. It would have explained much.

3.5 stars.

The World’s End

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This is the final episode in the very loose trilogy from director Edgar Wright, and writers and co-stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost following on from the extremely funny Shaun of the Dead and the highly amusing, if patchy, Hot Fuzz.

The story centres on five male friends, now approaching middle age, who have gone their separate ways, and all enjoying some degree of financial and domestic success but for Gary King (Simon Pegg) who has resolutely failed to grow up and has a drifting, casual drug-using lifestyle. He mocks his one-time friends for their domesticity mistaking his wastrel ways for freedom. He nonetheless persuades them all to reunite to complete an epic 12 pub crawl in their small home town of Newton Haven – a leafy, well-heeled conurbation in the stockbroker belt of southern England.

On returning to Newton Haven the men discover that the residents of the town harbour a shocking secret…

The World’s End is at its best in the first half of the film. There is more than a little poignancy as the group of friends get together on what they tacitly realise will be for all of them a last hurrah in trying to recapture their youthful excesses; ahead of them waits only old age and grandchildren bouncing off their knee. The film also has a less than sly dig at soul-less and homogenous pubs owned by corporates with no sympathy to local traditions.

The film is less successful toward the end when the town’s secret has been exposed and the friends battle for their lives, never really sure who amongst them is for real; the group’s decision to continue their alcoholic binge once the truth is exposed stretched suspension of disbelief beyond all credulity and from this point the storyline unravelled a little. The film’s ending is particularly disappointing and brought to mind TS Eliot’s line ‘This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.’

Nonetheless, there are several laugh out loud moments from the ensemble cast and in the main the film is amusing throughout, even in the weaker scenes. (For me, Nick Frost delivered one of the best lines and I was surprised to find myself the only one in the theatre laughing at it – I later established the term ‘punch your lights out’ is not prevalent in Australia, so the joke was possibly lost in translation.) There is also a welcome role for Rosamund Pike as an erstwhile girlfriend who does a good job breaking up the male-dominated story.

Special effects and CGI are more than adequate for a film of this genre and the action scenes from Edgar Wright were nicely handled. The film is more professionally produced than the first two in the series and there were nice deferential nods to The Village of the Damned.

The film has a good soundtrack – Blur, Pulp, The Soup Dragons –  and it was particularly nice to hear The Housemartins and The Beautiful South once more.

***

Tim Meade

Behind the Candelabra

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Behind the Candelabra

The New York music critic, Lewis Funke, described Liberace’s piano playing as ‘sentimental as possible…all showmanship topped by whipped cream and cherries.’ To the critics and discerning musical audiences, Liberace was little short of the Anti-Christ – a sort of talented André Rieu. But like Rieu, Liberace was unfazed by the vitriol that came his way. He gave a large swathe of the public – mainly blue rinse women of a certain age – exactly what they wanted, made no apology for it, and profited handsomely. Famously he responded that, upset at the criticism, ‘I cried all the way to the bank.’ He later amended this to say he went on to buy the bank.

More serious for him was any implied suggestion that he might be ‘a fruit’ as homosexuals were then often disparagingly called.

In 1959, Cassandra in the British Daily Mirror, described Liberace as being “…the summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want…a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.” Liberace sued for the implication and won the case, perjuring himself in the London High Court by denying his sexuality.

It seems incredible now that anyone could have been in doubt as to Liberace’s sexuality. Times were different then and by the mores of that era, Liberace had to ensure that his loyal fan base was deceived. Were the truth to have emerged, his career would have been ruined and he liable for criminal prosecution.

 Behind the Candelabra, as the title suggests, looks at Liberace’s rather seedy and debauched private life from the 1970s when he was in his late 50s. His career had long since peaked but he could still command massive fees and audiences for his Las Vegas shows full of chintz, glitz and glamour.

The film follows a standard, slightly old-fashioned, biopic formula not so different from The Glenn Miller Story of nearly sixty years hence. It details Liberace’s relationship with a much younger man who he inveigles into his life as chauffeur, secretary, companion and lover, eventually and inevitably boring of him and moving onto someone new and younger.

Neither of the main protagonists, Liberace (Michael Douglas) or his young lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), present as sympathetic figures – Liberace is portrayed as a manipulative ogre, petulant and spoilt in a manner unique to someone to whom nobody ever says no. Thorson is a chancer and user, happy to live a useless, lazy lifestyle as the toy-boy of a wealthy golden daddy, stealing from him as his drug habit spirals out of control.

What raises the film above the ordinary is an ensemble cast whose acting and delivery without exception is supreme. Michael Douglas gives a pitch perfect portrayal as the ageing lothario. In the few scenes showing Liberace performing, he radiates the man’s stage presence and charisma, contrasting his far from edifying off-stage persona. Douglas’s miming of piano playing is also good though not always well synchronised. It is unfortunate that the film was not released to theatres in the United States, showing only on television, thus precluding Douglas from receiving an Oscar nomination which would be well deserved.

Matt Damon, although far older than Scott Thorson at the time of his relationship, matches Douglas nicely as he moves from youthful naïvety to embittered and worthless gigolo. I’ve been less than kind about Damon’s acting in the past when he did little more than recite lines. But he now seems incapable of putting in anything other than a strong showing.

Though the film concentrates on Douglas and Damon, there is still plenty of opportunity for great cameos from a few well known faces. Dan Ackroyd has fun as Liberace’s manager; the veteran Debbie Reynolds likewise as the devoted mother. Funnier still is Rob Lowe as plastic surgeon to the stars, Dr Jack Startz. Lowe’s face is pinched, taut and lifeless resembling an Afghan Hound, personifying the specious vanity in trying to hold back the years.

If Steven Soderbergh is to be believed, this is his last film after a 25 year career as a director. Should it be that he has lost the passion and has nothing more to contribute, then so be it. But I hope that proves not to be the case. Soderbergh has made some great films since his debut with Sex, Lies and Videotape; earlier this year his thriller Side Effects was a fine example of that genre. Let’s hope he has a nice sabbatical and returns refreshed. Hollywood can ill afford to lose his talent.

3.5 stars

Tim Meade