Depp’s talent wasted in ‘The Libertine’

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In theaters

THE LIBERTINE, directed by Laurence Dunmore, written by Stephen Jeffreys, based on Jeffreys’ play, 114 minutes, rated R.

The new Laurence Dunmore movie, “The Libertine,” begins with Johnny Depp in close-up, his hooded eyes burning through the candlelight gloom, a glass of wine at the ready, his sharp, angular face reminiscent of a Picasso. “Allow me to be frank at the commencement,” he says. “You will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now, and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. I am John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, and I do not want you to like me.” And so we don’t.

Not that it’s difficult. As written by Stephen Jeffreys from his own play, “The Libertine” confirms what history knows – Wilmot was one grotesque, unlikable sod, indeed. In what arguably is the most disagreeable role of Depp’s career, the actor, one of our best, seems to be having a grand time playing the well-known writer cum sexaholic who couldn’t give a toss for anyone, himself included. Yet Depp’s enjoyment isn’t transcendent. The movie is a grimy mess, with too much of the writing proving just as sloppy as the muddy sets and the unwashed cast.

The film saddles Depp’s 17th century satirist with the sort of dialogue that could pull the glue out of a horse: “I wish you to shag with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads,” he says to the camera, which somehow remains steady. “I want you to feel how it was for me – how it is for me – and ponder, ‘Was that shudder the same shudder he sensed? Did he know something more profound?'” Doubtful.

The movie is concerned with a few things – the betrayal of the writer, for one, the peculiar times for another – but nothing more so than sex. It takes place, after all, during the Restoration, when bared breasts, loose talk, public fondling and orgies apparently were the order of the day. So was syphilis, which Wilmot contracted, but we’ll get to that later.

The film’s hook is King Charles II (John Malkovich, looking uneasy behind a phony nose), who has charged the gifted Wilmot to write the sort of piece that will champion his reign, as Shakespeare did for Queen Elizabeth. What Charles gets instead is a damaging satire, which ignites in him a rage that should have set the movie ablaze, but it doesn’t. It falls flat.

Meanwhile, Wilmot is busy ignoring his pitiful wife, Elizabeth (Rosamund Pike), for the actress, Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), with whom he falls in love before he gradually starts to waste away. Doubled over in pain, his nose rotting off his face, his skin flaking, eyes clouding, lips cracking, Wilmot keeps chugging along in an effort to anger and isolate everyone until he’s nothing but an unrecognizable skeleton with a sketchy heartbeat.

For an actor like Depp who enjoys taking risks, the lure of such a role must have been intoxicating. The problem with the movie isn’t him. He’s having fun. Instead, it’s the film’s failed execution that sinks it. Dunmore tries to generate energy around the ongoing theatrics, but they consistently feel canned, silly, predictable. True, some will be repelled by this movie, but few will be envious.

Grade: D

On video and DVD

CAPOTE, directed by Bennett Miller, written by Dan Futterman, 116 minutes, rated R.

Fifty years ago, when Truman Capote was approaching his zenith, everything about him was a shock – his personality, the punchy little lilt in which he spoke, his haughty air, his homosexuality, his absolute sense of daring. He was a gifted, weird little genius, complex beyond reason, smart enough to use his quirks to his benefit, and then careless and human enough to fall prey to them all.

Both sides of Capote are examined in Bennett Miller’s smashing film, “Capote,” in which Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Academy Award for his mesmerizing portrayal. The film is tough to shake. Throughout, Miller weaves through the debris of what Capote wrought when inspiration struck thanks to a New York Times article he read about a clutch of murdered Clutters in the Kansas hamlet of Holcomb.

It was 1959, the deaths were brutal, the details intriguing. Fresh from the success of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and looking for a new triumph in a new work, Capote found both in this felled Midwestern family, whose heads were blown off in cold blood by Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Richard Hickcock (Mark Pellegrino).

With the financial blessing of his New Yorker editor William Shawn (Bob Balaban), Capote left New York City and his lover, Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood), to get the story with the help of his childhood friend, Harper Lee (Catherine Keener). It would take him almost six years to do so, during which time Lee would release her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about which Capote would come to say in a revealing moment, “I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

He saw it. He also knew that he wouldn’t have achieved his own greatest success without her. The movie generates much of its richness from their relationship, but it gets its steel rod by focusing on Capote’s unexpected relationship with Perry, a man he came to like in spite of all that Perry did. Capote related to Perry – they had similar upbringings, each having been abandoned by their mother. But what the unsophisticated Perry couldn’t grasp was Capote’s true intent, and that was to finish his book so he could soar back into the arms of the nation, where he would be lauded, loved, adored and appreciated by those whom he felt mattered. In Perry, Tru saw a gold mine.

As such, what rails through the movie is a cold undercurrent not without flashes of warmth. What Miller understands is that writing sometimes isn’t the white-gloved profession some perceive it to be. The reason his movie is so good, is that he sees that writing can be just as cutthroat as committing murder. There’s passion involved in each, and where’s there’s passion, there can be blood. For Miller, Perry and Capote weren’t so different. Separate the fine clothing from the prison uniform, peel away the personalities to their cores, and what you have are two tragic, damaged individuals who ruined themselves.

Grade: A

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.

The Video-DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? BDN film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Bambi II – B+

Batman Begins – A

Broken Flowers – A-

The Brothers Grimm – D-

Capote – A

The Cave – C-

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – A-

Chicken Little – C-

Cinderella Man – A

The Constant Gardener – A-

Cry Wolf – D

Derailed – C+

Doom – C+

Dukes of Hazzard – D

Elizabethtown – B-

Flightplan – B-

The Fog (2005) – D

The 40-Year-Old Virgin – A

Good Night, and Good Luck – A-

Guess Who – C+

Happy Endings – C+

Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire – B-

A History of Violence – A

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – B-

Howl’s Moving Castle – A-

The Ice Harvest – B-

In Her Shoes – A-

The Interpreter – B+

Into the Blue – C-

The Island – C+

Jarhead – B

Junebug – A

Just Like Heaven – C+

Kingdom of Heaven – B-

Kung Fu Hustle – A

The Legend of Zorro – C+

Lord of War – C

March of the Penguins – A

Millions – A-

Must Love Dogs – C+

North Country – C

Oliver Twist – B+

Paradise Now – A-

Pride & Prejudice – A

Prime – B-

Red Eye – B+

Rent – C-

Saw II – D-

Serenity – A-

The Skeleton Key – B

The Squid and the Whale – B+

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith – B+

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride – B+

Transporter 2 – B-

Undiscovered – D-

Upside of Anger – B

Valiant – C-

Waiting – C-

Walk the Line – A-

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – A

War of the Worlds – B+

The Wedding Crashers: Uncorked – B-

The Wedding Date – B

Zathura – A-