Portrait of the Genius in a Relationship: or, A Basic Biopic Problem
Was crushed to hear today the JMS-authored Amazing Spiderman trade backs had not arrived. Cheered up again when seeing that Nora, sent by bimo, did arrive. Concluded after watching that would have left James Joyce after first night in Trieste, even if he looked like Ewan McGregor, which he did not. (McGregor, while charming, not my type anyway.) Nora clearly masochist, or saint. Presumably one good basis for the other.
Okay, I can't keep this up. Watching Nora reminded me that in a way, a recurring pattern in many biopics, at least biopics which don't idealize their subjects, is the reverse of The Girl principle. Whereas films and tv shows who use The Girl as the hero's motivation and inspiration but rarely bother to give her stuff to do on her own which characterises her beyond that, films and tv shows centred around The Genius often work on the implicit assumption that we, the audience, know the long-suffering spouse/friend/relation is right to take a lot of crap from The Genius, because he (I can't think of a female example right now, though of course there are biopics about female geniuses as well) is a genius. They owe it to posterity to believe in him and keep him happy.
This, incidentally, is an expectation you find in a great many written biographies as well, for a long time. And not just about spouses. Until about two decades ago, biographers of Heinrich Heine (witty and great German 19th century poet - our equivalent of Byron, I'd say) shared his assumption that his uncle Salomon (who paid, among other things, for Heine's father going broke, for Heine studying law which he had no intention of practicing, for various times in spas) was really mean to finance his nephew only intermittently and not to set him up for the rest of his life in his will. Well, I don't know about you, but I know what either of my uncles would have said if I had told him it was his duty to totally support me financially for the rest of my life.
Anyway, back to the fictional presentations of geniuses and their relationships. There is always the mentality of the time to consider as well, of course, but I still think several biopics take a short cut based on that inherent assumption. (Ed Wood, which is an anti-Great-Man picture, gently parodies this. Dolores leaves Eddie because she can't put up with his lifestyle and his crap films any longer, and Kathy stays and unquestioningly loves him, and supports his art, as the spouse of A Genius should. Only the very premise of the picture is that we know Ed isn't a genius, that he won't have his big break-through, that he's remembered because his films are so abysmally bad. So, technically, Dolores is absolutely right when she shouts at him "these movies are terrible!". We still don't like her for it.) Which is what makes the exceptions so memorable.
Vincent and Theo, for example, Robert Altman's TV take on Van Gogh and his brother. The compare and contrast to the conventional Van Gogh biopic, based on Irving Stone's novel, Lust for Life, is interesting. In Lust for Life, Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh is the saintly excentric genius, much let down by the women in his life, supported by his brother, but just why his brother always loyally supports him is never even inherently questioned - he's The Genius, after all. In Vincent and Theo, by contrast, you have Tim Roth as Vincent who might have every bit the social idealism the Douglas version displayed but has an extremely touchy temper to boot, and the mutual emotional dependency between him and Theo (Paul Rhys) is psychologically fascinating and a dynamic in ongoing development, and you get that Theo's continued support for Vincent might have been good for art, but not necessarily good for Theo at all. The most stable character in the film is Theo's wife Johanna.
The biggest problems of any genius biopic, however, is the challenge to get something of the genius in question across. This is easiest with a composer (Amadeus' gorgeous soundtrack made clear what poor Salieri was so angry at God about); easier when it's a sculptor or a painter (except if it's Picasso and the copyright hasn't run out yet), though then one has to be careful the momentum of the film isn't interrupted by art expositions. Frida is the only example I can think of right now which pulled that one off splendidly. When it's a writer, the scriptwriter's task is infinitely more difficult. I recognised some Joyce quotes in Nora, but based on the film alone, you wouldn't know what the guy actually did that was so extraordinary. (Maybe copyright problems again?) Wilde had the advantage of its subject being famed for eminently quotable aphorisms anyway, so we're not just told Oscar W. is a great writer, we hear him being witty and charming.
Maybe it's the curse of the novelists. I pity the inevitable Charles Dickens biopic or tv series. (There isn't one already, right?) It won't have that Wildean out, and besides, Dickens' marriage ended so appallingly that The Genius excuse won't wash unless they leave out that part of his life altogether. (Poor Kate D. did everything expected of the spouse of a genius - believed in him, produced children by the dozen, and then got left for a young actress. Which didn't fit with either Dickens' image of himself or what his Victorian readers expected him to be, so he declared he left Kate because she had been a bad mother to their children, and forbade said children to visit her.) You can't transport the genius of Dickens' novels unless you either film those novels instead of his life, or do what Dickens did himself on his reading tours, play out lengthy passages.
Or you could do the Shakespeare in Love thing - which is to say, look at themes in your subject's work and come up with an entirely fictional story altogether. And get Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay. By all means, get Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay.
Okay, I can't keep this up. Watching Nora reminded me that in a way, a recurring pattern in many biopics, at least biopics which don't idealize their subjects, is the reverse of The Girl principle. Whereas films and tv shows who use The Girl as the hero's motivation and inspiration but rarely bother to give her stuff to do on her own which characterises her beyond that, films and tv shows centred around The Genius often work on the implicit assumption that we, the audience, know the long-suffering spouse/friend/relation is right to take a lot of crap from The Genius, because he (I can't think of a female example right now, though of course there are biopics about female geniuses as well) is a genius. They owe it to posterity to believe in him and keep him happy.
This, incidentally, is an expectation you find in a great many written biographies as well, for a long time. And not just about spouses. Until about two decades ago, biographers of Heinrich Heine (witty and great German 19th century poet - our equivalent of Byron, I'd say) shared his assumption that his uncle Salomon (who paid, among other things, for Heine's father going broke, for Heine studying law which he had no intention of practicing, for various times in spas) was really mean to finance his nephew only intermittently and not to set him up for the rest of his life in his will. Well, I don't know about you, but I know what either of my uncles would have said if I had told him it was his duty to totally support me financially for the rest of my life.
Anyway, back to the fictional presentations of geniuses and their relationships. There is always the mentality of the time to consider as well, of course, but I still think several biopics take a short cut based on that inherent assumption. (Ed Wood, which is an anti-Great-Man picture, gently parodies this. Dolores leaves Eddie because she can't put up with his lifestyle and his crap films any longer, and Kathy stays and unquestioningly loves him, and supports his art, as the spouse of A Genius should. Only the very premise of the picture is that we know Ed isn't a genius, that he won't have his big break-through, that he's remembered because his films are so abysmally bad. So, technically, Dolores is absolutely right when she shouts at him "these movies are terrible!". We still don't like her for it.) Which is what makes the exceptions so memorable.
Vincent and Theo, for example, Robert Altman's TV take on Van Gogh and his brother. The compare and contrast to the conventional Van Gogh biopic, based on Irving Stone's novel, Lust for Life, is interesting. In Lust for Life, Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh is the saintly excentric genius, much let down by the women in his life, supported by his brother, but just why his brother always loyally supports him is never even inherently questioned - he's The Genius, after all. In Vincent and Theo, by contrast, you have Tim Roth as Vincent who might have every bit the social idealism the Douglas version displayed but has an extremely touchy temper to boot, and the mutual emotional dependency between him and Theo (Paul Rhys) is psychologically fascinating and a dynamic in ongoing development, and you get that Theo's continued support for Vincent might have been good for art, but not necessarily good for Theo at all. The most stable character in the film is Theo's wife Johanna.
The biggest problems of any genius biopic, however, is the challenge to get something of the genius in question across. This is easiest with a composer (Amadeus' gorgeous soundtrack made clear what poor Salieri was so angry at God about); easier when it's a sculptor or a painter (except if it's Picasso and the copyright hasn't run out yet), though then one has to be careful the momentum of the film isn't interrupted by art expositions. Frida is the only example I can think of right now which pulled that one off splendidly. When it's a writer, the scriptwriter's task is infinitely more difficult. I recognised some Joyce quotes in Nora, but based on the film alone, you wouldn't know what the guy actually did that was so extraordinary. (Maybe copyright problems again?) Wilde had the advantage of its subject being famed for eminently quotable aphorisms anyway, so we're not just told Oscar W. is a great writer, we hear him being witty and charming.
Maybe it's the curse of the novelists. I pity the inevitable Charles Dickens biopic or tv series. (There isn't one already, right?) It won't have that Wildean out, and besides, Dickens' marriage ended so appallingly that The Genius excuse won't wash unless they leave out that part of his life altogether. (Poor Kate D. did everything expected of the spouse of a genius - believed in him, produced children by the dozen, and then got left for a young actress. Which didn't fit with either Dickens' image of himself or what his Victorian readers expected him to be, so he declared he left Kate because she had been a bad mother to their children, and forbade said children to visit her.) You can't transport the genius of Dickens' novels unless you either film those novels instead of his life, or do what Dickens did himself on his reading tours, play out lengthy passages.
Or you could do the Shakespeare in Love thing - which is to say, look at themes in your subject's work and come up with an entirely fictional story altogether. And get Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay. By all means, get Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay.