The Libertine
Of all the movies that I've seen since I began seeing them every Friday, Laurence Dunmore's The Libertine is the only one that I've wanted to walk out on. It's not that Libertine is a bad picture. It's rather that I don't enjoy horror films. And that's pretty much what Libertine is. You don't have to posit extraordinary powers to account for the aura of decay that surrounds Johnny Depp's 2nd Earl of Rochester. Rochester was too cynical to realize his talents, so all that we have left of him is a string of ditties and an unholy reputation. He died at thirty-three, a wreck disfigured by venereal disease and alcoholism.
So far as plot goes, Stephen Jeffries's screenplay disposes of Rochester's later career in the usual way. Factual details are sexed up a bit, unlikely stories are leaned on, and the sentiments expressed are, with the exception of a reverence for wit, totally 2004. The women in Rochester's life are made to love him in the manner of modern women saddled with addicted boyfriends. Rochester's relationship with Charles II (John Malkovich) is incredibly presumptuous.
And was there ever so brown a movie shot in color? The problem with trying to recreate the unhygienic "realities" of Restoration England is that they turn the past into an exhibit, not the setting of a story. Londoners slog through muck-ridding streets without sharing our revulsion - what's wrong with them? The groaty side of life is played up to exceedingly in-your-face levels.
Johnny Depp has no trouble playing a bad boy, but here he's often sulking, and that's not attractive. Rochester's good times are behind him in this picture. Mr Depp's Jack Sparrow, in Pirates of the Caribbean, is so charming that he gets an adult viewer through an otherwise silly movie; there's nothing charming in The Libertine except for the actor's good looks, which weirdly persist even as his skin breaks out in lesions. I wonder if the double assault of "History!" and "Literature!" simply deflated Mr Depp's interest in his character. Curiously, as an actor he seems to be behaving himself - not letting go.
The cast is really very good, with great turns by Samantha Morton, Rosamund Pike, and Kerry Reilly among the ladies. Tom Hollander is almost unrecognizable as George Etherege, and not notably shorter than everybody else. Richard Coyle is very good as Alcock, Rochester's servant. I couldn't take my eyes off of the fake nose that was stuck on John Malkovich's face; even he was unrecognizable half the time, betrayed only by his voice.
In the end, I'm not a good judge of The Libertine. I suspect that it is a distracted adaptation of a powerful play - distracted into horror.
