KoHo said:
Saw HBO's Behind The Candelabra on the weekend. It was easily the best post-Oscar season movie I've seen this year. Not even close to any others.
Michael Douglas gave an impeccable performance as Liberace. He played the character perfectly, and it was one of those acting performances you really get in awe of. Matt Damon was great too, but Douglas absolutely stole the screen. The writing was also excellent. Both main roles were fairly complex characters and Douglas and Damon pulled it off. It's truly is amazing how MATT DAMON and MICHAEL DOUGLAS can portray an on-screen relationship and make it look extremely touching and convincing. Kudos to them.
You think? I don't know. They're both talented actors, no reason to think they couldn't.
Anyways, I'm fairly conflicted about the movie. I thought it was a great piece of technical filmmaking and there are some amazing performances in the major and minor roles but, and I know that there's no requirement for a movie to be didactic in this way or anything, I thought it was a little distasteful how they presented this really awful relationship, as you say, as "touching" or in any way genuine. Could you imagine a movie about a heterosexual relationship between a wealthy and famous man in his 60's dating/sleeping with a 17 year old girl, pressuring her to get plastic surgery so that she looks more like him, talk openly about adopting her and then dumping her a few years later for someone younger and the guy not coming off as a complete monster? Or the relationship not being a terribly exploitative/borderline abusive one? I don't know, it seemed a little creepy to me.