The Libertine:
I saw this movie just the other day and found it hard to believe that the critics didn’t like it. A quick review of those listed on RottenTomatoes almost unanimously stated that the work was too negative for their tastes.
I find that attitude to be extremely cowardly. In fact, a short story that I wrote got rejected by a magazine because the main character appears to die in the end. Well, that reflects real-life now doesn’t it. What is the problem with a hopeless ending though? Will there be mass suicides?
Certainly the movie in question reflects real-life, because it, from what I gather, is a story about a person that existed in history, namely The Earl of Rochester. He was and I believe is a well-known poet that was highly praised for his creativity, mostly in the realm of the poetic. Ever Voltaire said that he learned a thing or two from him.
The Earl was played by Johnny Depp; I’m a big fan of his and can say that I “trust†whatever film that he’s in will be worth seeing, so I’m biased when in my report that he did a great job.
The character was much like a low-level, not too perverse, Marquise De Sade, in that as the name of the movie suggests, he was a libertine. He was a bit of a fun guy and a bit of a dangerous nihilist, when he at his best, and that wasn‘t for long. Depp usually plays the hero, and it was fun to see him with a glazed over look of dismissive contempt on his face, as he did whatever came to mind.
The beginning of the film introduced the character in an unusual, yet old-time kind of way. Depp, in shadow, fills the screen with his face and addressed the audience. He tells us that we will not like him very much and probably even less by the end of the film. That was unique because such a speech makes you aware that you’re watching a film and most filmmakers don’t prefer that.
Anyway, when a person states that they don’t care if you like them, it can sometimes mean the opposite, and by the end you get the sense that the seemingly callous man was just seeking some kind of approval that maybe wasn’t possible in his time period. The film ends with Depp addressing the audience, but in a way contradictory to the opening. I suppose the suggestion is that he’s a neurotic.
I’m not going to talk about the plot because it’s simply about a rich man on the road to destruction and then a kind of redemption and early death. It’s certainly worth watching, but nothing beyond imagination. What I want to explore is the characters motivation and how it was handled by the filmmaker.
The movie could be enough to watch as just a spectacle of self-destruction without an explanation for the character’s actions, but that would have been a little unsatisfying for me. I thought it the case though until almost the very end. Ravaged by disease the Earl goes to see a play that was written about himself. Once there he confronts the actor that’s portraying him. The actor has little time to talk and begins nervously going on about how he must have this costume “now†and get on stage “now,†and so forth. The Earl then explodes with anger and chastises all actors for getting life wrong. He says something like, “life is not a series of ‘nows!’ as you people always portray it, but rather a series of ‘what fors?’ is the real experience.†It was then I learned that his motivation for being reckless was that he did not know or understand what life was. Existence was a torturous question for him.
To his credit, he ended the asking at thirty-three.
So, the man made me think of this place. I wonder how many unquiet minds there are here. How many people will spend their time in torture, quietly asking “why,†without any hope of an answer.