Pretty...but lacking

Rating: 7/10 (6 August 2008)

My best friend once told me not to watch this movie, as it would offend my evangelical Christian sensibilities. Well, the nudity and sexuality (and there is A LOT) is not really what bothered me about this movie. What bothered me was the lack of a satisfying conclusion. After two hours, the audience is left with an ending that sort of leaves you with a, "Huh?" There just didn't seem to be a point.
You'll notice that I still gave the film 7 stars, which means I thought it was pretty good. The hair, make up, and costume design alone are worthy of praise in this film, and I'm pretty sure it ate up half the budget. And Todd Haynes apparently decided to make up for this by casting actors that no one (in his home country anyway) had heard of, the one possible exception being Christian Bale (who looks like he'd just stepped off the set of 'Newsies' for half the film), but even at that, Bale had not yet shocked every critic in the world with his portrayal of Patrick Bateman, much less played Batman, and therefore not a name the film could rest on. Ewan McGregor wasn't Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Jonathan Rhys Myers hadn't yet played the King of Rock 'n' Roll, or the king of England. It was risky, but the whole lot were amazingly talented and more than up to the job, as their performances in the film and their careers since are more than evidence of.
The film, rather than being an unconventional biopic like Haynes' 'I'm Not There', is more like an abbreviated, fictionalized history of the Glam Rock movement. Rhys-Myers and McGregor's characters represent two sides of the movement; Rhys-Myers' Brian Slade is all about flamboyance and glitter eye make up; McGregor's Curt Wild is more about pure shock value, and Bale's young Arthur Stuart is simply a fan.
The unconventional structure is the result of the storytelling as it is sort of built around Bale's character, an older Arthur Stuart who hasn't changed much in looks save for a haircut, as a reporter in 1984 investigating the life of Brian Slade. You get Stuart's own rememberings of the era mixed in with the testimony of those he interviews. All of this seems to be building to something, but at the end of the film, it just falls flat and leaves you asking yourself, "What?"
So Mr. Haynes, 7/10 for great set and costume design, and fantastic acting, but you lose the other three for the complete lack of an appropriate ending.