Steven Soderbergh (2013)
Scott Thorson was working as a movie animal trainer when he went with a Hollywood producer called Bob Black to watch Liberace perform in a club, in 1976. Thorson was introduced to the celebrity pianist backstage before being invited to his palatial home in Beverly Hills. It’s possible that Liberace took a more instant shine to the young man because he was able to help treat an eye ailment from which one of Liberace’s dogs was suffering; in any case, Scott himself very soon became a lap dog – Liberace’s ‘assistant’, chauffeur and lover. The screenplay for Behind the Candelabra, by Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King, The Bridges of Madison County, The Mirror Has Two Faces), is adapted from Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, which Thorson wrote ‘with’ Alex Thorleifson. Wladziu Valentino Liberace denied until his dying day that he was homosexual. In spite of abundant evidence of his gayness in what appears on screen in Behind the Candelabra, I guess it’s arguable that Liberace’s sexual identity was primarily narcissistic: he was not only possessive of Thorson but arranged plastic surgery so that Scott would look more like him. Online images of Scott Thorson suggest that the treatment was rather more successful in achieving this aim than you might think from watching this film.
Michael Douglas’s Liberace, in what Steven Soderbergh threatens (again?) will be the last movie that he makes, has been rightly praised. Because Hollywood studios deemed the subject matter ‘too gay’, Behind the Candelabra premiered on television, on HBO, and won’t therefore be eligible for Academy Awards – otherwise Douglas would surely have been nominated for an Oscar (he has been nominated for an Emmy). Does the fearlessness of his portrait of Liberace come from playing someone very different from himself or owe something to recent serious illness, which has decided Douglas to seize the day? Perhaps both. Whatever the reasons, he displays a wit and, more than that, a zest for performance that I’ve never seen from him before (but which recalls his father). I remember Liberace as a middle-aged man whose appearance was striking, almost repulsive, because his unprepossessing looks were so at odds with the glitz and the jewels and furs that he wore. I don’t find it easy to understand, even looking at Google images of the younger man, how he could ever have been the object of female desire that he seemingly was. Because Michael Douglas is good-looking, the effect of his Liberace is very different. The age gap between Liberace and Scott Thorson, forty years his junior, supplies a creepy edge but there’s no doubting Douglas’s seductive quality in the role. If you’d seen Liberace in performance without knowing he was a big star, you might have imagined this was someone doing a garish take-off of a ‘real’ star – egregiously ingratiating, dazzlingly insincere. Douglas isn’t so good delivering the stage spiel – he’s not sickening enough – and this does slightly detract from the contrast between Liberace’s public and private personas. But I liked the way Douglas worked the piano so that the playing is a technically brilliant party piece, devoid of artistry. If he looked or sounded more like the original than he does he would be difficult to stomach for two hours. Douglas’s Liberace is possibly too likeable but this isn’t because of anything evasive in what the actor does.
Matt Damon, who’s twenty-five years older than Scott Thorson was when his relationship with Liberace began, is remarkably physically convincing at every point of the film. So too are most of the bodily and facial changes that Scott undergoes, although the weight gain that has to be countered by diet pills, which prove addictive, is a bit sudden, Damon is good at expressing Scott’s docile innocence at the start and his performance is strong throughout. Some of the praise for it is thanks, though, to the character being such an unusual one for Damon to play and in some respects he’s not well cast: a brittle temperament and extreme emotionality don’t come easily to him. He is excellent, however, in a scene in which Scott is struggling to hold his own in the legal wrangles that followed his break-up with Liberace. Here, with Scott struck dumb as he struggles to think, let alone articulate his thoughts, Damon gets across a limited intelligence in a way I’ve rarely seen him do before (perhaps his own intelligence has got in the way). The limitations of Damon’s portrait aren’t major but they become conspicuous because the film is increasingly Scott’s story – I reckon Damon has more screen time than Douglas – and this links to a larger problem with the material: Scott Thorson is not an interesting person and although Liberace is more interesting there’s not much to reveal about him in his private life. His public denial of his homosexuality and continuing bachelorhood may have doubly reassured his middle-aged to elderly female fans (maybe their feelings were predominantly maternal – but plenty of mothers don’t want their son to get married). Even so, his sexual orientation must have been an open secret if Behind the Candelabra is anything like accurate about the number of men that he flirted and/or went to bed with, especially when there was no wife or continuous female companion to suggest otherwise. As a result, Steven Soderbergh and Richard LaGravenese rely increasingly on accumulating description rather than dramatic revelation.
I really liked the film’s account of how Scott becomes part of the ménage(rie). Soderbergh manages to combine a cool distance with a flavour of what I take to be the characteristic tone of kiss-and-tell memoirs. It’s possible this style would have become tedious after a while but I missed it once it was gone: with few layers to peel away to get to the truth of the relationship, Soderbergh has nowhere to go except forward. There are several effective and amusing episodes – especially the gruesome cosmetic surgery, presided over by Rob Lowe as Dr Jack Startz, his own face-lifted smile suggesting Fu Manchu – but Behind the Candelabra turns into a lineal account of Scott Thorson’s years with Liberace. As domestic melodrama, it’s reasonably sophisticated – it’s not the case that once things start turning sour the downward trajectory of the relationship is uninterrupted – but it’s thin. Soderbergh does succeed, though, in making the physical context of the story multi-faceted. The extravagant opulence of La Casa de Liberace – conspicuous wealth is a severe understatement – is amusing, magical (in a childish way) and disgusting. The story spans just over a decade, ending with Liberace’s death in 1987: in other words, it begins pre-AIDS and ends in a time heavily shadowed by the disease. Soderbergh manages to suggest, but not too emphatically, a connection between the darkening mood inside Liberace’s mansion and in the gay world outside. There’s also a suggestion in the film of a bygone age when homosexuality could be kept hidden by stars. Then Soderbergh shows – and this is emphatic – a newspaper headline announcing Rock Hudson’s death in 1985; and a coroner’s autopsy report brutally supplants the euphemistic statement issued by Liberace’s personal physician. The implication of the film is that celebrity sexual dissimulation has become a thing of the past but I’m not sure I believe this. When exactly (and why) did press behaviour change? It’s striking that, even today, there are few stars whose public or screen personas demand that they are straight who have come out as gay.
Richard LaGravenese has written plenty of good, caustic dialogue and there are strong supporting performances – from Scott Bakula (Bob Black), Jane Morris and Garrett M Brown (Scott’s foster parents – the latest in a long line), Boyd Holbrook (Scott’s replacement in Liberace’s household) and Dan Aykroyd (Liberace’s manager). Aykroyd was unrecognisable to me – as was Debbie Reynolds, hidden under a false nose as Liberace’s mother, Frances. This casting is resonant because Reynolds carries with her suggestions of the determinedly sunny presentation of light entertainment decades ago. She isn’t sufficiently self-absorbed when the old lady is lamenting her loneliness but she’s excellent when Frances triumphs on the fruit machines in her son’s palace and demands her winnings in real cash. Soderbergh, as usual, was his own director of photography (as Peter Andrews) and editor (as Mary Ann Bernard). The music for Behind the Candelabra was the last score composed by Marvin Hamlisch, who died last year.
8 June 2013
