...you'd have to pay me to think about sitting through this film again. Part of me, I suppose, is glad that I saw it (and got it over with), and part of me wonders still hours after returning from the theater what went wrong here. What I think happened is this: a good leading cast (Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, and John Malkovich) was assembled with a first-time director, Laurence Dunmore, who either didn't know quite what he was doing with the material &/or tried too much (ok, we get it, you can do a hand-held camera move going in circles around two actors, what are you driving at though?), along with a screenplay that just doesn't work for me. Is it perhaps a little too 'wordy'? It's a term that is hard to use in a sense as it is based on the play by the same author. But throughout the film I kept on thinking that there COULD be a better film made about these people, about this Earl of Rochester John Wilmott (Depp); there are a few moments that do make the film watchable and even interesting. But should every character who speaks sound like they're saying something completely profound and 'big'? It's a case where saying less would've done more than having there being line after line of sometimes good, sometimes overbearing, dialog.
It's also a case where the actors are there doing what they can, but almost being trapped within the limits of the direction and script. For an atmosphere that gives off such debauchery and with a main character who does spark some interest in how he looks at the world (amid all of this royalty and wealth and artistry and not enjoying it), the whole tone and movement and style of the picture reminds me of a scene where a carriage is riding up to a castle, stuck in the mud, not being able to move out of place. Depp plays John, the Earl, for half of the film one way, and then the other half another (I preferred the second half, where he got to use some of his darker instincts to better effect), as a drunken poet who finds some kind of solace in an actress (Morton, dependable as always if definitely not at her best), while serving a King who could give a damn about him (John Malkovich, who is good, but what gives with the obvious hook nose). His plight into eventual depression, exile and disease would earn more merit if the audience could be let in on this world a little more. I can get into dour films, but this isn't one of them.
And it's a shame, since the scenes of a) the Earl's moments of poetry (which, as a poet myself, are quite good), b) the scene with the pornography/King play, and c) some of the juicier dramatic moments in the last twenty disease-ridden minutes, do bring a viewer in and sparks some fascination. But it's a mess in terms of just how all of this is steered by Dunmore, who implements a bad musical score, has no imagination with the camera, and doesn't know where to cut down on the 17th Century-era English dialog. Then again one can sense the pressures of being both a Malkovich AND Weinstein brothers production (Lord knows what was snipped off by Harvey at the last minute). But at the end it wasn't that I didn't "like" this character of the Earl (reffering to the prologue and epilogue done to the camera by Depp), but that I just didn't care. So, it's a mess, however, if there could be anything kinda sort of OK to say about it, it's the kind of mess that could only feature such consummate professionals like Depp and Malkovich; bad actors wouldn't go this far.
It's also a case where the actors are there doing what they can, but almost being trapped within the limits of the direction and script. For an atmosphere that gives off such debauchery and with a main character who does spark some interest in how he looks at the world (amid all of this royalty and wealth and artistry and not enjoying it), the whole tone and movement and style of the picture reminds me of a scene where a carriage is riding up to a castle, stuck in the mud, not being able to move out of place. Depp plays John, the Earl, for half of the film one way, and then the other half another (I preferred the second half, where he got to use some of his darker instincts to better effect), as a drunken poet who finds some kind of solace in an actress (Morton, dependable as always if definitely not at her best), while serving a King who could give a damn about him (John Malkovich, who is good, but what gives with the obvious hook nose). His plight into eventual depression, exile and disease would earn more merit if the audience could be let in on this world a little more. I can get into dour films, but this isn't one of them.
And it's a shame, since the scenes of a) the Earl's moments of poetry (which, as a poet myself, are quite good), b) the scene with the pornography/King play, and c) some of the juicier dramatic moments in the last twenty disease-ridden minutes, do bring a viewer in and sparks some fascination. But it's a mess in terms of just how all of this is steered by Dunmore, who implements a bad musical score, has no imagination with the camera, and doesn't know where to cut down on the 17th Century-era English dialog. Then again one can sense the pressures of being both a Malkovich AND Weinstein brothers production (Lord knows what was snipped off by Harvey at the last minute). But at the end it wasn't that I didn't "like" this character of the Earl (reffering to the prologue and epilogue done to the camera by Depp), but that I just didn't care. So, it's a mess, however, if there could be anything kinda sort of OK to say about it, it's the kind of mess that could only feature such consummate professionals like Depp and Malkovich; bad actors wouldn't go this far.