Judy: Renée Zellweger ... and little else | Culture
I have the feeling that there is a fixed pattern in almost all the films that are made about great music myths. They usually work commercially. For this, it is convenient to sweeten a little the very rugged existence that most of them led, to tell that they were very drugged and were long on the edge of the abyss but that they were finally redeemed. And if they died of a pasote, as has happened with so many, end the story telling that after so much glory and tragedy these people as legendary as tortured found a last and great moment of glory, a moment of redemption, a final love . That is, the viewers do not end up excessively depressed.
JUDY
Address: Rupert Goold
Interpreters: Renée Zellweger, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon.
Gender: biopic. USA, 2019.
Duration: 108 minutes
There are exceptions, of course. Like the great Amadeus, the story of Mozart, that great musician who died poor and alone, although Leo Ferré clarified that he was buried in the mass grave accompanied by a dog and his ghosts. OR Bird, the beautiful, sense and chilling tribute that Clint Eastwood made to the incomparable Charlie Parker. But the genre in the soft mode is fashionable and breaks lockers. Let them ask Bohemian Rhapsody already Rocketman
There is something that cannot be criticized for Judy, East biopic dedicated to Judy Garland. And there is no vocation to beautify anything. Everything is bleak. The only respites offered to this eternally placed woman, hooked on the pill and alcohol, insomniac, in prolonged professional and sentimental ruin, looking for the last economic and artistic opportunity in London, are the fleeting refuge offered by a homosexual couple in love of what the ancient diva represents and a magical moment when everything is collapsing in which he interprets the famous song Over the Rainbow, before an ill public. The rest is failure and desolation.
I have little memory and little fervor for the triumphant film career of the girl, teenager and young prodigious Judy Garland, including The Wizard of Oz, That so many people love. Yes I was interested in the adult and dramatic actress, touching in A star has been born and in Winners or losers? In Judy, the last years of this broken toy are described, but they also tell us about the barbarism that the Goldwyn Mayer Metro producer committed year after year with the young Judy Garland, putting it up to amphetas so that it did not faint in a tiring work rhythm that generated Immense business for the study. They prevented him to brutal extremes to have a minimum of his own life. They made her addicted to drugs and drugs for the rest of her existence. The character of Louis B. Mayer acts as a sophisticated monster, someone who sold dreams to the public, priming himself with the young broadcaster.
Everything is anguish and twilight in this movie, but I can't feel complicit in so much overflowing feeling. The work of director Rupert Goold is correct and also cold. None of the characters passionate me. I contemplate this tragedy from the outside, without entering it. And Renée Zellweger, a good actress who never arouses passions, is perfect. With the love that Hollywood feels for the characters with physical or emotional defects, it is almost impossible that they do not grant the Oscar to the meritorious work of Zellweger.
