Behind the Candelabra

Behind the Candelabra – It’s difficult to articulate a response to Steven Soderburgh’s Behind the Candelabra, a film version of Scott Thorson’s “kiss and tell” memoir about his relationship with Liberace.  The movie is fascinating, produced in Soderburgh’s typical chameleon style – Soderburgh is self-effacing and he doesn’t have any trademark techniques; he seems to adapt his methods to the material at hand.  In Behind the Candelabra, imagery and mise-en-scene become progressively more delirious as the emotional intensity of the film increases, the picture reaching its kitsch-climax when Thorson, attending Liberace’s funeral, imagines his lover ascending into heaven while performing the “Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha.  But most of the picture is concrete, closely observed, and relatively nondescript – Thorson slips into his relationship with Liberace relatively simply and without a lot of histrionics, the point being, I suppose, that it is easier to get into some things than it is to escape from them.  The picture depicts in stolid chronological narrative the progress of Thorson’s entanglement with the performer, complete with a prophetic warning from the “house-boy,” that the pianist will soon tire of his boyfriend and, ultimately, dismiss him.  The homosexual sex scenes between Thorson, played by Matt Damon, and Liberace as impersonated by Michael Douglas are relatively explicit and there is a lot of groping and heavy-breathing in vast candle-lit suites where hot tubs blossom like rare and frothy orchids.   Aside from the novelty of the homosexual love scenes, the plot has nothing much to recommend it – the story was old when Lola Lola vamped Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel and the HBO audience probably doesn’t need a warning that farm-boys from Wisconsin should stay away from the beds of cold-hearted egotistical Las Vegas entertainers.  The film is notable for what it doesn’t do:  we get no sense of Liberace’s plight as a gay man in the closeted 1970’s and the homosexuality of all the principals in the film is simply assumed and taken for granted.  The movie has no political subtext and doesn’t suggest that Liberace, or anyone else, is suffering or oppressed by reason of the prevailing mores – the film is more about the seductions of the celebrity life-style than a tract on gay rights.  More disappointing, in the long run, is the fact that we don’t get much of a sense for Liberace’s magnetism, his peculiar charisma, and his talent as a performer.  Most of his performances are shot from a remote angle (probably to conceal Douglas inability to play the piano), sometimes with Soviet style montage effects – for instance, Soderburgh uses three disparate angles to show Liberace stalking about the stage in his massive white-fox and ermine coat.  People remember Liberace as a consummate performer but there’s little in the picture to suggest the fascination that he exercised on his audiences – we don’t sense that he likes performing or is much invested in his art.  In a sense, Soderburgh’s trademark as a director may be negative – that is, he takes a lot of things for granted that other directors would emphasize and, often, minimizes his effects..  Here, the gay sex and milieu is presented in a matter-of-fact way and Liberace’s histrionics as a performer are viewed from a distance, reported objectively in a journalistic fashion:  Here, Soderburgh seems to say, is how this characters makes his living – draw your own conclusions  The film’s flamboyance is limited primarily to minor parts:  Dan Ackroyd is strangely appealing and sinister as Liberace’s Jewish agent and Rob Lowe turns in a spectacular expressionistic performance as a sleazy plastic surgeon, so hip and deadly that he can’t even fully open his eyes.  The campy interior locations, mostly Liberace’s Palm Springs mansion, are impressive and the acting by Damon and Douglas, although very broad, is effective – Douglas, in particular, imitates Liberace’s grating Milwaukee accent with fingernails-on-chalkboard accuracy.  There is some gory footage of plastic surgery that seems out-of-place in this generally avuncular film.  Here is the conundrum that the movie presents:  the film is wonderfully interesting to the extent that you actually wish the picture were longer, but you can’t figure out what exactly makes the movie so compelling.  Perhaps, in the end, it is precisely Soderburgh’s refusal to really dramatize much of the material, his sense that the story of mismatched and ultimately doomed lovers is somehow in itself valuable and doesn’t need to be tricked-out with additional political or historical or, even, emotional significance.