Driven actors, glittery characters, and a slice of very weird Las Vegas life

Rating: 8/10 (19 December 2013)

Behind the Candelabra (2013)
Well, there's the story of Liberace, which is astonishing in its own way. Then here is Michael Douglas being Liberace in a true bravado performance.
So first things first—see this. It's just a hoot, and a well done biopic. Throw in Matt Damon's first rate performance, and some other secondary believable parts, and you realize there is some serious discipline involved. Most of all it is Douglas who manages to not overplay the part of a man who overplayed his public life to an outlandish extreme.
If you don't know who Liberace is, you'll find out, but it helps to have a clue (and I have some memories of people liking him, and run across old records of his at junk shops all the time). He was a kind of piano force who decided not to be a serious concertizer but to simply entertain. He wanted to make people happy, and that pretty much sums up his life.
Liberace also seemed to lack some kind of long term empathy that would see the damage he might cause young men who got sucked into his influence—and bedroom. It really didn't quite matter, and in his superficial way you can see why. It was a trade off of one kind of oversized entertainer for a more compassionate and giving person—or something like that. It's hard to sum up here but in fact, the big point somewhere, is people of all stripes were playing immediate pleasures against deeper commitment.
There is ultimately something thin here as a movie, and it only filled in a bit by watching some Youtube filler on my own afterwards. You might do the same. Comparing fact and representation is pretty amazing.