Me and Orson Welles Review
Posted by Erik Luers on 12.23.2009
F is for Orson......
Zac Efron ... Richard Samuels
Claire Danes ... Sonja Jones
Christian McKay ... Orson Welles
Ben Chaplin ... George Coulouris
Zoe Kazan ... Gretta Adler
Eddie Marsan ... John Houseman
Smooth, peppy, and light on its feet, Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles is as enjoyable as a fictional, comedic tale about working with Mr. Welles could be. It isn't particularly weighty or contemplative, and it doesn't stay with you long after having viewed it, but it moves along nicely and wraps itself up into a tight, faux historical package. The story at hand, although not concerned with real events (at least not as they actually occurred), takes place in late 1930s New York City, Broadway to be exact, where Orson Welles is preparing to mount a new production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Welles' participation in stage work has always been well documented (as has this production), and in using a familiar and truthful historical backdrop, Linklater gets to be the second director this year after Quentin Tarantino to rewrite history for the sake of the cinema. As portrayed in the film by Christian McKay, Mr. Welles was quite an inglorious bastard himself, and what we get is an outsider's view of this larger than life, extremely intelligent and self aware thespian and showman. Like Bullets Over Broadway and the play, Noises Off, Linklater takes the “let's put on a show/all aboard the sinking ship” approach, and the movie transpires into a fun, wacky hoopla with enough backstage drama to please even the Schuberts and Belascos.
The plot is what Me and Orson Welles is most chiefly concerned with, so let's trudge right along through it. Teen pop sensation Zac Efron plays Richard, a seventeen year old high school student who really wants to become a professional New York actor. He travels frequently into Manhattan, and one day, quite out of the blue — or thanks to fate, as so many actors seem to believe — he offers to try his hand at the drums for a theater group arguing outside of the Mercury Theater. Orson comes out and sees him, is impressed, offers him a small role in Caesar, and good golly gee whiz, our budding Brando has witnessed his dream come true. As rehearsals begin, we will get to know Welles the actor, as well as Welles the director, Welles the dictator, Welles the womanizer, and Welles the backstabber. Musical beds is a game that most theater companies resort to playing sooner rather than later, and Orson is a gosh darn Grandslam champion. The theater is a cutthroat business.
So, as things usually go, the performers are afraid they won't be ready for opening night, and everything seems to indicate they won't be. People are mad about the size of their roles, the lighting on their faces, the memorization of their lines, etc. The theater even winds up flooding, but that has more to do with an action by our leading man than by bad luck. Still, superstition is an able thing in the theater world, and Orson is happy to see everything go wrong, that is, up to a point. God forbid someone try to damper his sex life. Unlike a boxer before a fight, the more sex you can get before opening night, the better the overall production.
Speaking of a certain Rosebud, Sonja (Claire Danes) plays the romantic interest to both Richard and Orson, and that will lead us down many a dark paths; she is a star-screwer, one who can't wait to work her magic on David O. Selznick, a big time producer who has been thinking of turning Gone With The Wind into a major motion picture. Like all old fashioned, a star is born (or almost born) studio pictures from the flapper and post-flapper period, it all comes down to a blond ingenue. Beauty always kills the beast. And thus, the film will end much the same way it started, with an out of work young actor hoping to reach the big time. At the end, he will be a little wiser, a little less jaded, but the story will ultimately be rendered inconsequential. It's one half of a really good double bill.
In terms of Linklater's other films, this one is sweetly nostaglic and less culturally relevant and concerned with Generation X than say a Before Sunrise or Tape. The characters do not seem to be people Linklater knows, but character types he learned from watching old movies; at the end, you almost instinctively expect Robert Osbourne to appear on screen asking what you thought. It's a glorified and romanticized view — even when Orson gets to play mean and heartless, there's a gentleman-like quality circling his approach. When things don't work out as well we would have hoped for Richard, there's no real harm done. He has walked away with experience and life lessons that will last him a lifetime. Cue outro music and obligatory newsreels.
Linklater allows us to be a fly on the wall in some scenes, my favorite involving Welles performing a live radio play to remarkable artistic results. Acting up a storm, improvising his lines, and upstaging all of his fellow actors, Welles is shown as a somewhat pompous force to be reckoned with, and it allows us to appreciate the man as well as McKay's performance embodying him. The scene also gets the details right. The actors stand in a circle, ferociously flipping through the pages of their script looking for their next line, as creative performers work on the side creating a vast array of sound effects to be used diegetically within the scene. This hustle and bustle sense of frantic professionalism gave me a greater appreciation for these weekly radio plays, and I find myself now having a greater interest in the craft. Oh, and the scene which precedes this one, involving Welles reading aloud from Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, is a real winner too. A little foreshadowing isn't always a bad thing.
My main complaint with the film resides in its familiarity. When a story is done well, its cliches shouldn't matter (or the technique can transcend the material), and while this one is done well, Linklater isn't really breaking new ground here. Maybe that's the point. By paying your respects to the movies and moviemakers of yesteryear, perhaps your goal is to stay in tune with their styles and forms of narrative storytelling. This is a respectful directorial job from Linklater, capturing an era without necessarily becoming one. It lacks a distinctive voice while hearkening back to so many others. One interesting thing of note is the casting of Zoe Kazan in a bit part as a potential love interest to Richard. Ms. Kazan is of course the granddaughter of the famous Elia, the film and stage director who had been directing plays on Broadway around the same time as Orson, so there's a nice link/nod to history there. Multiple Brooks Atkinson references round out the period.
In a large ensemble piece such as this, all of the actors playing the important, some famous and some not so famous theatrical figures, must look and sound the part (debatable, I realize), while running the risk of being accused of meager impersonations. The most scrutinized part was always going to be that of Orson Welles, and McKay gets all of the cadences exactly right. He is playing Orson Welles the “character” and not Orson the “personal man” (a distinction worth noting), and he is very comedic and strict in the way his Welles directs and argues with actors. And as our two leads, Richard and Sonja, Efron and Danes are serviceable, but it must be noted that these are not very challenging parts. They are reactionary roles to Welles, and Efron and Danes do their jobs admirably. There are no small parts, only small actors.
Me and Orson Welles is an enjoyable little movie that is, in film geek speak, middle of the road Linklater. That's good enough for me, and you may enjoy it too. I suspect most people who seek this film out will be the types interested in film history and/or Mr. Welles, and this film, while not always true to the facts, is a "what if" scenario done well. It's a comforting old romp that's sure to be Peter Bogdonovich's favorite (or least favorite) movie of the year. We need another someone like Orson Welles, and this movie is a friendly reminder. Long before we were an America known as a fast food nation, we were arts-savy and respected the greats. This film revels in one of them.
The 411: So Christmas is coming up and you're wondering whether or not this is the big movie to see this holiday weekend. Well, it depends. If your a big Welles fanatic, you've probably already seen it by now. If you aren't, and are just on the fence, there are better films out there. I recommend A Single Man, A Serious Man, and Broken Embraces. And oh why not, Antichrist. But Linklater does good work here, and the story is interesting enough to suit even the marginally interested. It's up to you. Take a chance. I liked it without feeling passionate about it, but who am I to judge?
