The facade crumbles

Rating: 6/10 (14 October 2013)

It happens far too often to us Europeans that we have to wait for weeks, often months to see a popular film after it was already released a long time ago in the United States. An especially extreme recent example was "Albert Nobbs", which brought Glenn Close another Oscar nomination, it took two years after its first airing in the US after it finally came to Germany. But enough moaning now: Of course we have lots of French, Italian, German etc. films that make up for it because we get to see them earlier and they may not even have a release at in the United States. And then we very rarely have a film like "Behind the Candelabra", the big winner during 2013's Primetime Emmys, which wasn't distributed for the big screen in the USA, but was over here in Europe.
It stars Michael Douglas, evidently completely cured from its cancer, as the colorful entertainer Liberace and Matt Damon as its young lover Sctt Thorson who also wrote the book this film is based on. I listened to Liberace quite a while ago and enjoyed some of his music. Also I really like Matt Damon in almost anything (most recently "Gus van Sant's criminally underseen "Promised Land"), so I was kinda curious about the film. Don't care too much about Douglas, but that's mostly as I haven't really seen that much of his work. And my expectations weren't disappointed. It's definitely elevated a lot by the great acting from the two protagonists, but also from most of the supporting cast, like those who played Liberace's first co-star and the plastic surgeon whose unique expressions made him such an unlikeable character. It's hard to judge how accurate Douglas' portrayal was as I was born only shortly before Liberace's death, so I have no live memory really, but thankfully we live in the age of videos and the footage i've seen is very similar to Douglas, especially a magnificent job on the voice. And besides that, most of what we see about Liberace here is not really his shows, but his private life which wasn't in the public eye back then anyway.
My favorite scenes mostly centered on Damon due to my previously mentioned preference. Of course his character is not such an icon and that's why he probably lost the Emmy to his costar (I wonder if Douglas could have won the Oscar for it, especially as the Academy Awards were referenced in the film with performing there was one of Liberace's main goals), but i thought he was equally good as Douglas and portrayed nicely how he was stuck being attraction and disgust for Liberace's plastic world. I wasn't moved as much as I hoped I would by the scenes of Liberace's mother passing away or finally at his own deathbed near the end, but my favorites were more those where Thorson is informed via phone that his foster mother died or when he has his breakdown and realizes that everything is gone, including his face. Another scene I liked was their conversation when Damon breaks into tears and says something like it's been so long and he forgot how it was when they were nice to each other.
The surgery scenes were short, but quite graphic indeed, pretty off-putting just the way it should be. The vanity of Douglas' character is exactly what made him so interesting. He always switches between despicable, pitiful and admirable, the latter mostly when we saw his music which wasn't as frequent as I liked. The only longer part is pretty much right before Liberace and Thorson meet for the first time and Damon's character is rightfully wowed by Liberace's talent. Before writing this review I listened to his 1970 appearance on Lucille Ball's "Here's Lucy" where he performs a wonderful rendition of "I'll Be Seeing You" with Lucie Arnaz. Well.. obviously the film focuses almost exclusively on Liberace's later private life as an "old bag" how he called himself jokingly in the film. The early years are completely left out and the career aspect is not frequent either. We only learn that he basically sues everybody who dares to accuse him of homosexual tendencies. The two completely opposite references to ice skater Sonja Henie were very well-done to depict the political climate and the perception of homosexuality and AIDS back then. That song would have been a truly nice inclusion. But that's just a minor criticism.
I probably disagree with the Emmys that it's the best TV movie of the year and it's definitely not among the very best I watched in theatres this year, but it still made an entertaining watch and dragged almost never during its 2 hours. The acting is outstanding and so are pretty much all the visual aspects like set decoration, art direction and, last but not least, the makeup of course. Somebody ahead of me in the ticket queue asked the seller if Liberace did really exist and I have to say I was shocked when I heard that, especially as he was clearly older than me. I hope the success of this movie brings this legendary entertainer back in the minds of the younger generations.