リバティーン: The Libertine: シネマコンプレックス[シネコン]: CineMa Complex[CineCom] @ シネコム

/ 2006-01-13 If you go into THE LIBERTINE envisioning Johnny Depp in his previous role as Captain Jack Sparrow or Willy Wonka, forget it. You won't find a similar persona here.

THE LIBERTINE is a dark film that the studio wisely decided to release only after the Christmas holiday season. In it, Depp plays John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester (b. 1647 - d. 1680), whose life of debauchery was a public scandal even in a society that tolerated the loose morality of King Charles II and his court. Ironically, as the film makes a point of depicting, Charles (John Malkovich) reluctantly, but regularly, banished Rochester from the royal presence for the liberties the latter took in lampooning the former's free-wheeling lifestyle.

THE LIBERTINE is a depressing affair mainly because there's nobody in it to like. Moreover, neither Wilmot nor the viewers' sensitivities are spared the ravages of tertiary syphilis, the disease that ultimately kills the Earl; the film is a great argument for the advent of penicillin. Only Rosamund Pike as Rochester's long-suffering wife may gain audience sympathy. Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), the struggling actress whose career Rochester takes upon himself to further, apparently for uncharacteristically altruistic reasons, matter-of-factly accepts his help but remained unengaging to this viewer. The gloom is enhanced by a cinematography accomplished in somber, washed-out tones, particularly brown and dark green, with lots of shadows and murky candle light. Even the daylight is muted, as if in winter.

Now having said why THE LIBERTINE isn't light and airy, I have to also say that it's a powerful display of Depp's superlative talent. If the film wasn't so bleak, I'd expect a stampede to nominate Johnny for an Oscar. Rochester's two monologues for the camera, at the beginning and the end, the latter as his face recedes into darkness, are but hints of the excellence in between.

At one point in the movie, Rochester says (if I remember correctly): "Life isn't a sequence of 'urgent nows', but a listless trickle of 'why should I?s'." The tragedy for Rochester is that, at least in this screenplay, answers to the latter are piteously few. However, your answer to the question when contemplating seeing the movie should be: "Because Johnny Depp is as good as you'll ever seem him."