THE LIBERTINE (2004) **1/2 The line when Johnny Depp explains why he always speaks his mind is one of the all-time great Hollywood lines: brilliant, and perfectly expressed. There are several moments of comparable brilliance in the film; Depp perfectly captures that magnitude of genius to boredom-that sense that the world is inadequate to entertain him, and so he must do so himself. The expression is so brilliantly achieved that it must be in some elemental way, native; and so the relentless self-centeredness with complete recognition and no remorse. So Depp nails the character in a big way in the best scenes. Unfortunately he's also regularly required to convey heavy thoughts while the camera lingers…no, gets stuck….on him just sitting there. That he doesn't do. He's smarter than everyone else, and better looking, and knows it, and isn't near satisfied; we get all that, but there's something else that he doesn't get at…some depth of that dark brooding is not communicated. The problem isn't so much, ultimately, that Rochester isn't all that great of a character, so much as that Depp isn't able to raise him beyond the limitations he knew in life, as he did so historically for Ed Wood. Depp's Rochester is unquestionably resolutely devoted to a certain strain of nihilistic decadence that rock stars have acquainted us with quite well over the past half century. It's a good portrayal of that and never succombs to being either a glorification of pleasure or a morality tale…and that it can't quite figure which it's shooting for isn't fatal…but for all that and an admirable measure of ambition it fails to be consistently exciting, or even interesting. And the scenes with John Malkovich are disappointing, too: Depp carries the hopelessly one-sided affairs well, but there's no sense that Malkovich realizes that something historical should be within their reach. And so, quite fairly, I don't think the audience does, either. To tell the truth I'm not less than shocked as how little Malkovich brings to the role of Charles II. Charles was obviously in love with Rochester (at very least thought the world of him) or he wouldn't have kept taking those ridiculous chances, putting so much of his own increasingly limited credibility on the line…but that kind of passion is never in evidence, and John fails to even evoke much of the complexity of being a monarch. It's not Depp's greatest role either, but it does contain several of his most brilliant and triumphant moments, and that's a lot to say given the depth, breadth and brilliance of Johnny's career. Enough so that….I think making a dramatic piece of narrative cinema about Led Zeppelin is a very bad idea; but if they had to do it anyway I wouldn't hesitate to cast Depp as Jimmy Page. In an uneven but entertaining prologue Depp assures me that I'll end up hating him, but jealous. Not really, I've lived through enough of all that I think, I more like him in spite of himself and instead felt very sorry for him.
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