A triumph for Steven Soderbergh and everyone involved.

Rating: 9/10 (6 May 2015)

HBO spared no expense in bringing BEHIND THE CANDELABRA to fruition. This lushly mounted TV movie tells, in intimate detail, warts and all, the story of the very rocky six year love affair between a dog trainer named Scott Thorson and the flamboyant showman Liberace. This movie scores big not only in production values and on-target performances, but in a story that provides something that is so rare in movies like these: balance.
Richard LaGravenese's screenplay is based on Scott Thorson's book, so it's most likely that the facts presented here are pretty much what happened. What surprised me (pleasantly) is that the screenplay does not present Liberace as this big rich gay ogre who lured this naive young boy into his lair of sexual iniquity, expensive jewelry, and fancy cars. Liberace wanted Scott and dangled a lot of pretty things in front of him but Scott was perfectly aware of what was going on and entered the relationship with his eyes open, despite what anyone might say.
We not only get to see the young hayseed get his head turned by the glamour of Hollywood and the initial constant attention of a show business icon, but we also get an up close and personal look at the icon...aging and terrified about it and actually trying to perpetrate the illusion that he was heterosexual, which the film implies that he did really well, but I just find it so hard to believe that people believed this man was heterosexual. What we also see is an aging gay man whose wandering eye is always looking for the next better built and younger thing as Scott's relationship goes full circle.
Michael Douglas won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his dazzling interpretation of the legend...this is the 3rd movie made on the subject but no one has ever brought the humanity to Lee that Douglas has. Douglas is completely invests in playing a homosexual character without resorting to stereotyped gay behavior or over-the-top lisping. On the other hand, I love during Lee's first meeting with Scott, Douglas looks at him like a steak smothered in onions.
Matt Damon's Scott Thorson is a fascinating character journey that Damon makes completely believable...Damon has not been this sexy and charismatic on screen since THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. It appears that Damon created Scott from the outside in, starting with the clothes, the hair, etc. and created a character we come to care about, even if his naiveté is sometimes a little hard to swallow. Watching his descent from small town innocent to dangerously obsessive and jealous drug addict is not pretty and Damon doesn't shy away from it at all. There's also a couple of effective supporting performances from Dan Aykroyd as Lee's agent and Rob Lowe as a slick plastic surgeon who gets Scott hooked on diet pills and talks him into surgery that would make him look more like Lee, an idea of Lee's that I was shocked Scott consented to.
The film also boasts superb production values with absolutely superb work from the makeup team, who made Debbie Reynolds unrecognizable as Liberace's mother and gave Douglas a look in his final bedside scene that actually made me gasp. One of the best movies I've seen in a long time that was a biography and a love story but no clear villain...and I liked that.