Excellent Bio Pic

Rating: 10/10 (28 August 2014)

Beyond the Candelabra
With a subject as over the top as Liberace, one would expect an element of caricature to be unavoidable in a film about any part of his life, let alone the last years that received so much publicity throughout the world. Instead, this film gives the viewer a fully realized human being flaws as well as fine points. Liberace is fully formed in the beginning of the film. Still growing is Liberace's companion, Scott who transforms from the somewhat naive rube into a man who has become accustomed to the extravagances of wealth commingled with tinges of fame. The actors responsible for these two men's portrayals are simply amazing. Michael Douglas allows himself to be changed chameleon-like into the aging, smothering, sometimes disingenuous, and always entertaining Liberace. Matt Damon brings vulnerability, acquiescence, and disenchantment to the role of Scott Thorson. This film, while giving the viewer enormous excess in so many areas costumes, interior design, personal adornment, sexual encounters. creates a genuine world, no matter how flawed and filled with intrigue, that is inhabited by real people. The film does not let up. The film does not shy away from the impolite or trashy. Innuendo has no place here. The reality of these lives and their lifestyles simmer with humanity, shortsightedness, and betrayal. Michael Douglas, known from The Jewel of the Nile through Fatal Attraction to Wall Street, completely transforms himself into the persona of Liberace. He is magnetic in both directions he attracts and then he repulses. He welcomes and then he rejects. He proclaims a Catholic spirituality and a sexual baseness with the same intensity and cinematic truth. His Liberace is sometimes hard to take, but always fascinating; his love for Scott is at once stifling and one sided and yet compelling and understandable. His larger than life public image is contrasted neatly with his sometimes small minded attention to the details of daily living. The one overriding aspect of this film is the depiction of the time: open, rebellious, and exploratory but colored by Liberace's attempt to deny his very being for the sake of the primitive attitudes of his conservative fan base. The film in some respects is as much about the man Liberace as it is about the social mores of that era. This film at some points is hard to take, but its refined grittiness never lags, and the viewer is continually pulled forward in this extravagant, sumptuous, and intense production.
24 Aug 2014