Dorian Gray, 2009: A Review

by shionline

Yesterday, as appropriate for someone who hates most movies, I was dragged into one by a friend. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray a few years ago, on an Oscar Wilde binge, and the movie trailer made it look just generally bad. I was only convinced by the presence of Colin Firth, who makes everything better by appearing on set and has a very sexy voice. We went to watch it in a tiny theatre, and only realized very later that it was made in 2009, making Israel terrible at bringing movies over.

Going with someone who hasn’t read the book was actually fun. The plot, as everyone should know, is about young Dorian Gray, played by fetus Oscar Wilde Ben Barnes. Dorian arrives to London, and meets adorable Basil, played by Ben Chaplin, and the required quipper, Henry, who is Colin Firth and has a wonderful beard and a sexy voice. While Basil paints Dorian’s titular picture, Basil goes on corrupting the kid. Eventually, in a well-known plot-point, the painting ages, but Dorian doesn’t.

These three main characters play off very well with each other, but the first half of the movie suffers from its many montages. We have sex montages, time-passing montages, and love montages. It also doesn’t treat woman very well, as Women are only there for Dorian or Henry’s pleasure. This makes some sense, when you think of Oscar Wilde, and his own treatment of women in his writings. My biggest complaint about the movie, probably, is that it takes philosophical fictions, and tries to turn it into horror. The picture sounds like a rejected Nazgul, and many scenes are there just to scare us. I didn’t find them very effective.

However, most of my complaints disappeared during the last part of this movie. The portrait still sounds like a serial killer, but at this point, when the story suddenly gets much better, I couldn’t bring myself to mind it very much. The faster pace, the new characters, and the psychology of this act were surprisingly well-done, after a slow start. I could have lived with less CGI, personally, but for a movie from 2009, I know these things age very fast.

The actors, in British tradition, all do a very good job, and no one looks like their face has been sanded to perfection, not even those who are supposed to look like that. I usually get very annoyed by ironic remarks in period dramas, a-la-Titanic, but the few who found their way into this movie were surprisingly good, and served to round-up the characters, rather than show how very clever the writers are. The historical references are well-made, but these, again, only really crop up for the second half of the movie, so much so that it feels as though I’ve watched a double-feature, and one was completely unmemorable.

One of the reasons I love adaptations of Oscar Wilde, and his writing, in general, is the decadence you get away with in your period drama adaptation. The clothes in most of these are usually very good, but this movie, which spans over 25 years, starts of very, very badly. Wilde is most-recognized for his 1890s fashion, but this is represented so badly in the movie, I could never have guessed this was the period we were in. The men’s clothes are fine, but all dresses, apart from Sybil’s artistic-movement gowns, and some of the orientalist get-ups are just awful, and look like they were made in the eighties. One we reach the early 20th century, though, the movie takes another turn: All women are actually very well-dressed. I suspect they just raided Downton Abbey’s costume department.

All in all, I enjoyed this film, and especially the last hour of it. Keep in mind, though, that as a movie about decadence, it doesn’t shy away from sex, and any kind of sex, at this. It also doesn’t ignore the homoerotic undertones of the original novel, which is wonderful.