Reviews
Dorian Gray
September 9 2009
Oliver Parker
Starring Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Rachel Hurd-Wood
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The Picture of Dorian Gray is just too juicy a template to leave alone: sexual deviance, eternal youth and a truckload of one-liners from the master of aphorisms, Oscar Wilde. Matthew Bourne’s 2008 ballet underscored its timeless appeal by transposing Dorian into a world of coke-snorting, youth-obsessed fashionistas. Here, director Oliver Parker ostensibly retains Wilde’s Victorian setting but takes the liberty of extravagantly overstuffing every gap left by suggestion in the original text. This means Sex and Violence. A particular highlight offers a combination of the two, as memories of Dorian’s S&M exploits are intercut with an afternoon tea scene. Cue abundant close-ups of sensuous scones being slathered with naughty clotted cream and sexy, bloody, oozy strawberry preserve. It’s all a bit tacky.
Because this is 2009, however, Dorian (Ben Barnes) is generously furnished with a psychological backstory of child abuse (complete with fuzzy flashbacks to a beastly attic), presumably to explain his Faustian aspirations. ‘My grandpa, Lord Kelso, like, didn’t love me, so I sold my soul to the devil in exchange for eternal youth, yeah?’ Shucks, why didn’t you just say so? As for the infamous portrait, as Dorian’s soul shrivels up in inverse proportion to the notches on his bedstead, not only do maggots crawl out of the canvas, the painting itself makes what can only be described as zombie noises.
The 24-carat cast and Wilde’s zinging dialogue generally manage to make themselves heard above the overproduced din, though. Colin Firth clearly relishes his role as super-cynic and arch-corrupter Lord Henry Wotton, who spars over Dorian’s soul with Ben Chaplin’s warmly sympathetic Basil Hallward. With two fingers up to chronology, the action shifts from the 1890s to a good decade or so after Wilde’s death in 1900, where Rebecca Hall is drafted in to play Henry’s suffragette daughter and Dorian’s last-chance redeemer. Hall, as ever, lights up the screen, with a turn as the feisty, wonky-toothed, intellectual brunette love interest (if you’re struggling to envisage it, just close your eyes and think of any film she’s ever been in).
Albert Lewin’s 1945 adaptation made a virtue of understatement, allowing Dorian’s demise to creep up on the viewer like a cold shiver, reserving the odd flash of colour photography to accent the spectacle of the degenerating portrait. Parker directs his version like a kid who, after one too many Haribos, has been let loose with a bumper-pack of poster paints.
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The film is absolutely amazing! Ben Barnes's expressive features really show the full effect of his acting ability. The subtleties of his skillfull acting, in scenes such as when he visits the opium den and bumps in to an old friend, and when him and Sybil are courting by the river i particularly apreciated. The film does vary quite a lot from the book however, falling inbetween "loosly based on the book" and "the book to every letter" which can be an annoying category, but in this case, the beautiful cinematography and acting made up for it severly. And the bad reviews i keep seeing DO NOT do this film justice! x
Written by Hana Wilson on September 23rd, 2009 at 18:19