Burton and Taylor (tv film)
It's been finally done: after various attempts that were embarrassing in various degrees, we finally got a good film about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It wisely did not try to be a biopic covering their entire relationship, or even those parts that were most famous (and where the audience would have the most mental images to compare), but instead picked a time near the end of Burton's life, the disastrous (as far as the critics were concerned, not the audience, for the cash, it flowed) run of Noel Coward's play Private Lives they did together on Broadway, years and years after their second divorce. So you have a short and limited time frame which allows for better character focus, plus aged ET and RB which means the actors don't have to compete matching them in their prime.
The next smart thing the BBC did, putting the project together, was the cast. Because it's Dominic West as Richard Burton and Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth Taylor. Neither of them looks much like the originals, but they have the charisma, and they have the craft. I can't tell you what a relief it is so see Helena Bonham Carter in something where she doesn't have to do the 104040th variation of her Gothic wildwoman persona that she picked up after abandoning the Edwardian beauty persona. I always thought either was selling her short because in those films where she's neither, she tends to be excellent. (A more recent example: supporting Colin Firth in The King's Speech.) Here, she's glorious, capturing the wit, the vitality, the middle-aged booziness and the larger-than-life-passionate nature. Dominic West must be able to do self-destructive witty Celts in his sleep by now, and he's very much not asleep in this film. (The voice isn't Burtons but gets the idea of it across very well, if that makes sense.) Also very important: they have great chemistry. (BTW, Burton and Taylor don't always have it in their screen appearances; real life chemistry doesn't necessarily translate, and neither does film chemistry to real life. See, say, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, who were both passionately in love with other people when they filmed Gone With The Wind and completely uninterested in each other.) The script gives both of them great zingers and, given the obvious temptations here, valiantly resists imitating either Edward Albee or Noel Coward. It does go for bittersweet and the can't live with, can't live without that the subject asks for, while also making it clear why "live with" wasn't an option anymore. It's what we call a chamber play - Kammerspiel - in German, for the tv format, and if you're uninterested in Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, it's still a good story about a middle aged couple of exes whose ties to each other went very deep, and who face aging in a profession that forgives anything but yet do so with gusto and no genteel restraint whatsoever. May it come out on dvd soon, BBC.
The next smart thing the BBC did, putting the project together, was the cast. Because it's Dominic West as Richard Burton and Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth Taylor. Neither of them looks much like the originals, but they have the charisma, and they have the craft. I can't tell you what a relief it is so see Helena Bonham Carter in something where she doesn't have to do the 104040th variation of her Gothic wildwoman persona that she picked up after abandoning the Edwardian beauty persona. I always thought either was selling her short because in those films where she's neither, she tends to be excellent. (A more recent example: supporting Colin Firth in The King's Speech.) Here, she's glorious, capturing the wit, the vitality, the middle-aged booziness and the larger-than-life-passionate nature. Dominic West must be able to do self-destructive witty Celts in his sleep by now, and he's very much not asleep in this film. (The voice isn't Burtons but gets the idea of it across very well, if that makes sense.) Also very important: they have great chemistry. (BTW, Burton and Taylor don't always have it in their screen appearances; real life chemistry doesn't necessarily translate, and neither does film chemistry to real life. See, say, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, who were both passionately in love with other people when they filmed Gone With The Wind and completely uninterested in each other.) The script gives both of them great zingers and, given the obvious temptations here, valiantly resists imitating either Edward Albee or Noel Coward. It does go for bittersweet and the can't live with, can't live without that the subject asks for, while also making it clear why "live with" wasn't an option anymore. It's what we call a chamber play - Kammerspiel - in German, for the tv format, and if you're uninterested in Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, it's still a good story about a middle aged couple of exes whose ties to each other went very deep, and who face aging in a profession that forgives anything but yet do so with gusto and no genteel restraint whatsoever. May it come out on dvd soon, BBC.