(2005. dir: Mary Harron) My usual problem with biopics is that they almost inevitably squeeze a whole life into a given formula (black musician fights poverty and racism to find success, only to risk it all for drugs; woman singer fights poverty and sexism to find success, has to choose between work and family) without giving much credit to the individuality of the specific human. HBO biopics, on the other hand, have a different slant. There's always a ton of money involved: you can see it in the artful glamor of them, and in the stellar casts of actors they score even for lesser roles. This is my third, after one about Orson Welles and the making of Kane and one about the silent film era when someone had the brilliant notion to bring Pancho Villa to Hollywood. They all do one thing extraordinarily well: bring to life a specific (glamorous) time and place, in slick, lovely detail. What they don't care to do are tell good stories or give their stellar casts of actors much of any interest to do, and this one is no exception.
New York in the '40s is beautifully evoked in suave b&w, and Miami in the '50s in over-saturated, faux-postcard extremo-color. It looks great. The actors are very good. Jared Harris probably comes off best, partly because he has the most flamboyant character to wield, a drunken English roue and bondage photographer, and partly because he generally comes off best in anything he's in. The tone of the film is smooth and superficial, showing us glimpses of Bettie's life without delving into (or allowing her to delve into) any emotion at all. She's just a nice gal from Nashville who lived a nice life back in the days when shooting bondage porn was a wholesome family activity, then found her way back to the church and lived a nice, older life there. It glosses glibly over the top of a gang rape with the same ease it does a church service. Her relationships with men are not over-emphasized, which is a good change, but one comes away with a sense that she never had a particularly interesting conversation with any of her men, either. You also never see her at rest: cooking food, or taking out the trash, or slouching around in dungarees. She's always done up to the nines, never seems to have problems like bills to pay or depression or bad hair days, and she never has to worry about her weight, or, indeed, any negative issues at all concerning her body, which may be the secret to her great ease before the camera, but how likely is it? that someone who makes their living being gorgeous and semi-nude should never suffer anxiety about the instrument of her success?
The other thing that's never addressed is the issue of children and birth control, which would have been a HUGE concern for a sexually-active, good Christian woman in that pre-pill era. Did she have children? How did she not? Why did she not? Again, I applaud the refreshing change that the maternal issue is NOT the main focus of the woman's life, but it would have had a lot of bearing on her choices, and on her self-perception, and it seems like crucial insight, again, glibbed over for the sake of the smooth and the sexy.
But these digressions are just that: alternate roads not taken. The aim of this HBO biopic was not to give us insight into the great Bettie Page, but to allow a pretty and non-challenging journey into that seedier, underground sub-branch of The Greatest Generation, without making it look unseemly at all, or dark, or dangerous, just vaguely titillating, as viewed through a scrim of good-natured fun.
Reedus plays her first husband, a jock/soldier with a single scene and little of interest to say. He's fine, but wasted, like most of the cast. The nice thing about seeing him in movies like this (and Beat and the Conspirator) is to know that he's not culturally bound to modern America. He can travel with some ease into the past and feel like he's integrally part of it. Many actors (see, for instance, Alexis Bledel in the Conspirator as well) do not.
Rating: two stars
Reedus Factor: one star
No comments:
Post a Comment