Zellweger may find Oscar gold waiting at the end of her rainbow
Remember the controversy back in 2013 because a bunch of Australians had dominated the new screen adaptation of The Great Gatsby, that most quintessential of American stories? Fast forward six years, and now we’ve got Brits helming a new biopic of one of America’s most beloved — and troubled — stars, Judy Garland. Fortunately, Judy fares a bit better than Gatsby, thanks in large part to a dazzling performance by Renée Zellweger in the title role.
British director Rupert Goold (True Story) and British TV writer Tom Edge (The Crown) have adapted British playwright Peter Quilter’s 2005 Tony and Olivier-winning play End of the Rainbow here, with mixed results. The film focuses on a rather desperate period toward the end of Garland’s life in 1968 when she played a series of shows at London’s Talk of the Town nightclub. She took the gig in the hopes of making enough money to pay her debts and provide a stable home for her two young children, Lorna (Bella Ramsey) and Joey (Lewin Lloyd). Involved in a heated custody battle for the children with her ex-husband Sidney Luft (Rufus Sewell), Garland’s anxiety and depression were aggravated by her life-long addiction to drugs and alcohol. Her London performances often deteriorated to the point that the audience angrily booed her and pelted her with food.
The film also flashes back to Garland’s teenage years on the set of her most famous film, The Wizard of Oz, giving us an understanding of how the adult Judy came to be. At just 15-years-old, Garland was constantly pressured to be thin and to work incessantly. The studio, in fact, plied the teenage Garland (played here by Darci Shaw, another Brit) with both diet and sleeping pills, setting her up for her lifelong struggle with addiction and eating disorders.
Much of the blame for this poor treatment of young Judy is placed on MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer (Richard Cordery), who, in a pre-MeToo era, is both creepy and cruel as he cajoles and bullies Garland into getting back to work. In one scene, Mayer tries to convince Garland that her taxing life, with its attendant fame and money, is better than the dull existence of being her true self, Frances Gumm from Minnesota. Plenty of other girls are prettier than she, Mayer callously tells Garland, and they would gladly trade places with her. Of course the irony is that towards the end of her life, Garland wanted nothing more that the peace and stability of being a hands-on mother who could live with her children.
Despite these flashbacks, the film comes up short in providing any new information about Garland, and has few surprises. The script also doesn’t allow the supporting cast to do much supporting. While Cordery is appropriately lecherous and cold as Mayer, his scenes are so brief that his performance becomes more of a caricature. Jessie Buckley (Chernobyl), as Rosalyn, the Talk of the Town theater staffer tasked with handling Garland, is so restrained that we often can’t tell if she has compassion or disdain for Garland. Similarly, Finn Wittrock, as Garland’s fifth and final (and much younger) husband Mickey Deans, plays his cards so close to the vest that we never know if he genuinely cares for Judy, or is simply trying to cash in on her fame.
But perhaps the lack of depth in the supporting players doesn’t matter, since this film is Zellweger’s all the way, and she more than carries it. Her performance alone is reason enough to see the film. While her voice can’t match Garland’s, Zellweger does justice to Garland’s signature songs. Her rendition of “Come Rain or Come Shine” slays the Talk of the Town audience, and stirs us, as well. But Zellweger’s real strength is showing us Garland the woman: the mother of three children whose vulnerability belied a wicked sense of humor, and the former vaudevillian who could command a packed room for two hours with just her voice and the force of her personality.
Zellweger is, in fact, far better than this uneven movie deserves. While the picture veers towards the overly sentimental at times — a scene in which Garland’s audience turns the tables and sings to her instead is particularly cringeworthy — Zellweger always rises above such clichéd material. Watch the scene, for example, in which she calls her kids from a phone booth late one night, hoping for a response to a question she somehow knows isn’t coming, or the scene when she delights a star-struck gay couple by inviting them to dinner after the show. Garland’s loneliness and need for acceptance are achingly palpable in these scenes, and Zellweger never overplays the emotions, but rather makes us feel viscerally the weight of Garland’s troubled life with just the slightest facial expression or earnest line delivery.
At one point, Garland is asked to explain what the classic song “Over The Rainbow” means to her. The song is about the walk to get back somewhere that represents hope, she says: “The walking has to be enough.”
—————————-
Judy opens today at Bay Area theaters.
