| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
A |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A |
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A quiet movie celebrating a meteoric star
by Giometta (movies profile)
May 23, 2008
10
of
11 people found this review helpful
I was humbled by this movie, at times so honest and so unflinching in its look at old age and at other times using it as a backdrop to a tour de force acting performance by Peter O'Toole. What a lovely thing, to see our "Aurence", whithered and drawn from years of drinking and hard living, showing us what acting is all about.
In the first moments on screen, I thought how quickly life goes, remembering the young beautiful Peter O'Toole, in fluttering white clothes, striding across the desert dunes.
We watch the sardonic yet loyal Maurice stalk the young beautiful Jessie, who has the self-awareness of a stone. We watch Maurice slide like an alligator into the water after her...we don't know what part of him it is that prowls after her, but we know it, and watch his desperate struggle to be alive and grasp-- no caress,her youth.
I was respectful of the storytelling in this film. Nothing was sugarcoated or untrue. There are things we like about the characters and things we don't. But we see O'Toole in many lights, sometimes as a death skull, sometimes as an animated scarecrow of a man. Sometimes he does great slapstick, as when he tries to peep on Venus' first try as an artists' model.
Reading some of the user reviews, especially the first on Yahoo! here, that questions the morality of this film, explains to me how much we need great films that portray more than cars blowing up, young people having sex, or the end of the world. This gem of a swan song for a great, great actor portrays a man contemplating the hopelessness of the decaying body after a life of vitality. In him we feel all the life of a lusty, vibrant soul, and feel his rage against the dying of light, quoting Shakespeare with ease, imparting meaning to each word in what would just have been an utterance in another actor's throat.
I also appreciated Vanessa Redgrave's performance and found myself in tears at the wordless scene of commiseration between an old man and his alienated, but still caring, exwife.
Based on advertising, I would not have gone to see this film because there has been almost nothing on the television showing clips. But since Peter O'Toole is nominated for his performance, I went.
The Oscar this year is simply his. There is no contest. Yes, Mark Wahlberg did a good job of impersonating a Massachusetts State Policeman (he ought to be able to, he's from there), but Peter O'Toole showed us what acting is in this movie, and how much we will miss him when he gone.
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