'The Libertine' as oppressive as a dark, dismal English day

Robert Strauss, The Los Angeles Daily News

Friday, March 10, 2006

Ah, the Restoration!

That jolly time in the last half of the 17th century when England kicked the Puritans out of power, brought back the monarchy in the form of party boy King Charles II, and everyone had a ribald old time.

Of course, there had to be a morning after all the licentiousness, and - considering the state of the sanitation arts back then - it must have looked as venereally horrible as it appears in The Libertine.

With all due respect to the concept of accurate historical re-creation, though, why modern filmgoers would want to look at anything so dismal is a question that must be asked.

Adapted by Stephen Jeffreys from his smart, sometimes-impenetrable play of the same name and directed by Laurence Dunmore, The Libertine is an oppressive experience. Based on the debauched life of John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, it leaves the impression that not only did nobody enjoy all the sex and drinking in 1670s Britain, but the sun shone only, maybe, three times during the entire decade.

All the water must have been muddy, too, as everybody appears caked in the filth and unable to wash it off.

This might be worth viewing if the film's characters came to life or its abundant philosophical and moral observations went more than pockmarked-skin-deep. Perhaps they do, but since the movie's dialogue is spoken in a stylized locution just short of iambic pentameter, it's muddled into a highfalutin drone quite early on.

No doubt this manner of speech is as historically accurate as everything else in the movie. But that doesn't mean Johnny Depp is good at saying it. As terrific an actor as he is, verbal mouthfuls and deep drama have never been Depp's strengths, and those are precisely the gifts Wilmot calls for.

A born rebel whose roguishness shocked even the liberated society of his time, Wilmot was a close pal of Charles (John Malkovich, not as decadent or intriguing as Rupert Everett's Charles in last year's Stage Beauty), even though the king couldn't stand some of the earl's more pornographic and politically critical playwriting.

Wilmot married a woman he kidnapped (Rosamund Pike's Elizabeth Malet, long-suffering), whored and drank away her hard-earned affections, and then got himself all hung up on an inept young actress, Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton, in the film's best performance), whom he trained to become London's brightest stage star.

Unfortunately for him, Barry proved to have a mighty reserve of pre-feminist self-esteem just as he was truly falling in love for the first time. Unable to manipulate her and finally losing the king's forbearance, Wilmot went underground. Luckily for him, syphilis or something worse began eating away at his face around that time, making for a good disguise.

OK, maybe not so lucky. But the film suggests that all this torment might have had a redemptive effect on Wilmot. That's nice and tidy, and like everything else about The Libertine, probably truer than not. It's also pretty puritanical.

Man, this movie doesn't want anyone to have to have any fun at all.