Neither One Thing Nor ‘T’other: The Critic
National Treasure Sir Ian McKellen is THE CRITIC — Jimmy Erskine, scathing erudite lambast of actresses and actors everywhere, and with a cult fan following because of his opinions. Unfortunately Gemma Arterton’s ageing actress Nina Land really values his opinion — and will do literally anything to get it.
Part Gaslight/Trilby, part Wildean Dorian Gray (but with a theatre critic) and part Maurice — with murder — this chocolate boxy costume drama is more likely to grab you by the throat and try to strangle you. The story also can’t make up its mind what it is. Intriguingly set in Stephen Poliakoff territory (inter-war years, with the elite loving Fascism and Moseley’s Blackshirts, whilst vehemently hating Jews, black and brown people and the working classes — as well as publicly practicing homosexuals).
Thumbing his nose and his words at everyone, Sir Ian’s critic is a not very secret homosexual as everyone seems to know about it, and whilst there are threats, nothing really happens ‘cos lawyers — and class status and privilege. His arrest (suggesting underground behavIour being exposed) jars with his carefree attitudes generally. (No Dirk Bogarde-esque repression or fear of exposure here). Ditto the Soho club scenes. At the same time, he has a penchant for soliciting younger, working class rent boys in the park — a class/power dynamic which is barely examined, apart from when the Critic’s regular steps in to protect the ageing actress from Sir Ian’s potential fists. Brutal by word and brutal by nature.
At the same time, the ageing actress is starting to get stage fright — and is trying to avoid her former lover artist Stephen Wyley (Ben Barnes), who is very married with children to the wealthy but weary Cora Wyley (Romola Garai). Cora is the beloved daughter of the Critic’s editor, Viscount David Brooke (Mark Strong). Strong has an amazing ‘30’s look, hair and all — such panache. Mimicking Lord Beaverbrook and other powerful ‘30’s news magnates, ironically Mark Strong’s character is a genuinely nice guy, treating the Critic more fairly than the times would suggest he deserves given his socially risky behaviour, sneering attacks on ageing actresses in the press and disregard for the fact that everyone knows his law breaking secret. Mark Strong’s editor is nice — he cares for his wife, Mary Brooke (Claire Skinner), (who the Critic keeps saying is barking, though we never see this until the end in a Brideshead snobby kinda way). Moreover, he’s a family guy (viz. public lunches with his family in tow — but not theatre trips), is fair and kind — and everyone likes him. (Apart from the Critic). Though sacked with honours and kindness, the Critic (incomprehensibly) decides to get him. ‘Cos the Critic knows that the Viscount is secretly stage struck…
Rather than attacking him with words, he sets the Viscount up with the reluctant Nina Land, actress of his stagey dreams — and then proceeds to blackmail him. Which results in his employer’s shameful realisations, his ‘noble’ and ‘self-sacrificing’ suicide —the Critic maybe realising that his employer was much better as a boss than his daughter. It also reveals that his family are horrible — as his daughter, son-in-law and wife almost collectively dance on his grave and disparage him. The only one who has fond memories of him is the actress set up as a honey trap to lure him, though with some vehement snark at being with him. Even at this moment, Viscount Brooke kindly realised that she might have been coerced into pleasing a powerful man because she felt she had to or it was expected of actresses to behave thus with powerful men — giving her the freewill choice to leave or return. For (stagey reference), he wasn’t expecting a repeat performance — or indeed a matinee. But the Critic is!
The actress can’t cope with what she’s done to get continuously good reviews and publicity and seeks solace from her new best friend and coercive pimp, the Critic. Big mistake. Which then results in a Dorian Gray love pact as the Critic turns his lover, Tom Turner (Alfred Enoch) into an accomplice. Ultimately there is betrayal — and still the Critic criticises everyone, apart from himself.
Pacing is the big problem here. Some people walked out the showing I saw — partly because of Sir Ian’s Critic declaring his love of rough sex and cheerfully using (and though not shown, abusing) sex workers — and perhaps because this is billed as a lush Downton Abbey-esque comedy drama/thriller.
Moreover, the film struggles with tone — Sir Ian starts off cute and cuddly, equally ageing — and soon to be redundant and despised. Consequently, he’s ripe for revenge — as someone who enjoys humiliation, he now inflicts it publicly on others with relish. He’s sympathetic as he gets arrested for despising laws and insignia— laws the man laughs at — and runs rings around the Blackshirt establishment haters.
However, just as his intention to abuse and use working class younger men is never really discussed, his misuse of the ageing actress as a honey trap, who he forces into sexual encounters with Mark Strong’s editor — for his own gleeful revenge — is glossed over too. We don’t really see (unlike Dorian Gray or in Trilby/Gaslight) how persuasive or magnetic he is — or how he plays with others via their love of his words, influences, the right reviews at the right time, his connections. We don’t really get a sense of what he could do for them, how he could make or break them — instead he loftily kind of looks down on them, sneering (a bit like Statler and Waldorf in the Muppets). Nor is there really any tussle in the characters before they do what he unspeakably suggests — they say ‘no’, flap around a bit, he says ‘yes, do it’…and of course they mostly do. (With regrets and moping afterwards).
Vitally, is he establishment or anti-establishment? Is he in fact not so cute and cuddly, but a groomer, amoral, capable of murder and manipulation, of dispatching and disposing the inconvenient? Little time is given to establish motives — we see something of the actress’s moral despair as she weeps in the bathroom, taking off her make-up ‘post-performance’ or appears at the Critic’s roaring drunk and angry. Or when she literally flits from yet another forced encounter. At the same time, we don’t really get a sense of why she wants the Critic’s approval so badly— unlike Dorian Gray’s fiancée, the ageing actress is successfully acclaimed by everyone (it seems) apart from the Critic. Only her mother hints at performance issues and tells the actress to get some gumption and speak up for herself before the Critic bullies her in print — again. If we had a sense of the Critic encouraging everyone else to join in, the actress’s behaviour would make more sense…
Why does the Critic matter so much to her (and to anyone?) Is he an inspirational/aspirational figure, a surrogate father figure. a master maestro? Given the themes of the film, it would have been intriguing to see the Critic get the actress to join him in a ‘lavender marriage/relationship’ to add to the complexity and discomfort. It would then also account for some of his control over her — and why they keep together? We also needed to see her failing more apart from a bad review from the Critic and struggling to remember words, and fighting the beginnings of panic due to stage fright. I appreciate that the Critic is the Critic and her lifelong inspiration for becoming an actress, but he also seems to be only person critiquing her performances. Given the endless white roses from her secret admirer, love from the public and constructive support from her director/producer, really she could ignore the Critic and her mother — and simply carry on. We need to see her feeling her age more — there aren’t any other actresses around to compare her with — or compete against. Only she mentions her age — no-one else does. (We need to see other cast members gossiping, whispering, side-eyeing). Again, if the movie is focused on its stagey themes, then the issue of being an ageing actress obviously not successful with younger rivals in the wings could have been played with more oomph. Which would make the actress more desperate — instead she’s merely mysteriously vulnerable — and the damage which the Critic really does to her is in destroying her relationship with the editor’s ‘very much on his high horse by the end’ son-in-law. (The abrupt ditching of the actress by the artist is a huge ‘pot calling the kettle black’ moment).
And the unevenness is all part of a bigger problem (maybe the script itself, maybe the editing). Is this Joe Orton costume drama or Gosford Park meets Trilby? Is this a stagey Francis Urquhart, or a social satire as all the world’s a stage? Either it needs to go full Dorian Gray/Limehouse Golem Gothic — if it’s about a Critic criticising those around him — to nasty ends; or if it’s about a critic revenging himself through power dynamics and relationships, then it needs to be more Gaslight/Trilby, or just go full throttle Gosford Park snark and snap. Or play more with the theatre setting in an Agatha Christie homage as the social and literal bodies keep flying. Or it’s a 1930’s melodrama and everyone needs to be much less naturalistic, and romp after Romola Garai’s Cora in a storm of narcissistic emotion.
And part of all of this is down to the Critic himself as the movie (again maybe editing, maybe Patrick Marber’s script) can’t work out whether the Critic is an insider or an outsider. Are they part of the establishment they snark at, so are taking down their peers, as they are pushed out? Or are they a tolerated outsider being pushed into being more of a puppet and out for cutting the strings being pulled — and hunting for revenge? Is this Gosford Park or Ripley?
Overall, how big is the stage here? Is the Critic a critic of the world they inhabit and encounter (a 1930's Ripley?) or are they a tolerated outsider, until they start making everyone uncomfortable — and then they need to be caged and controlled? We also never see the social or economic impact of the Critic’s hinted at redundancy — they are still able to dine with genteelly unemployed friends at their club, and go to the plush theatre to scribble reviews.
Despite the odd script, the performances are wonderful — especially when the Critic with almost fatherly confessor care tells the actress that she’s completely without hope, redemption or rescue, the destructive master of her fate, the captain of her own capsizing boat — and it’s all her fault, and she only has herself to blame for the consequences of her actions. Ofcourse she should reap the consequences, for there is no-one else to help. (Enjoy the contrast of the Critic’s god-like behaviour and thinking here — how much he has set himself up over others).
All the while, his hands are dangerously close to her neck…He then appears to take care of her — and he does, in unexpected ways…
Alfred Enoch as Tom Turner was delightful every time he was on screen — I loved the times when he and the Critic composed and typed away on the reviews. There were some splendid moments as the Critic bathed in the same bath in which he had dispatched some inconvenience only a short while before. Ben Barnes was great — especially in his deluded ending, not realising that the actress has started to fracture. Lesley Manville lit up the screen as mother of the actress, though her screen moments were limited. Romola Garai was formidable and coldly horrible as a great society lady, knowing her worth to the last pounds, shilling and pence — and weighing everyone else up in the same way.
Mark Strong was exquisite — gentle, tender, kind and dominating each scene he’s in, just with a look. As the son-in-law, Ben Barnes plays the outsider artist and Jewish son-in-law, though he’s more of a bit player, and the things society has against him never really amount to much — or are given time to breathe. (If the movie had decided to go Gosford Park, then all the tensions it hints at could have heated up to seething levels). Or Wildean snarky comedy as both father and son-in-law are seeing the same actress.
Instead whilst his wife is disparaging, her father (and his father-in-law) is both horrified by his daughter’s nastiness and anti-Semitism and bizarrely sympathetic to his son-in-law’s new adulterous love interest, even when he finds out that she’s the woman he loves! Father-in-law’s niceness and nobleness at this point begins to look doormat-ish…His compassion and appreciation of everyone’s motives, even appreciating why his daughter is so vile, begins to look like feebleness (which is what everyone says about him when he’s dead). (Though in his tears at the theatre, and shocked tears springing to his eyes during lunch with his son-in-law, we get something of what he’s really feeling — and especially when he walks solidly off with a shot gun…)
Ultimately, the most obvious outside of them all is the most honest — and noble…Equally wonderful are the sumptuous Art Deco locations (sadly not listed in the end credits)….
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