Arizona Reporter - Movie Reviews - 24/11
ME AND ORSON WELLES
Freestyle Releasing
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: A-
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written By: Holly Gent Palmo, Vince Palmo, from Robert Kaplow’s novel
Cast: Zac Efron, Claire Danes, Christian McKay, Zoe Kazan, James Tupper, Leo Bill, Eddie Marsan, Ben Chaplin
Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 11/18/09
Opens: November 25, 2009
You might expect this low-budget recreation of Orson Welles’s New York stage production of Julius Caesar to be typical Sundance fare; amusing, but instantly forgettable. Lo and behold, however, “Me and Orson Welles,” under the direction of Richard Linklater (“Before Sunset,” “Dazed and Confused”), is a sensation blessed with remarkable acting, authentic-looking production values, and enough energy to turn a Cadillac gas-guzzler into a hybrid. To travel from Roland Emmerich’s bloated, $260 million “2012” to Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles” is to go from the ridiculous to the sublime. While some would say that this movie is targeted to lovers of theater, it’s nice to have faith that a regular audience with broad, but sensitive tastes, would gobble the movie up. It doesn’t hurt that the poster-perfect Greek-godlike Zac Efron stars, a guy who should be able to rival “Twilight Series”’ Robert Pattinson as a teen heartthrob, and besides Mr. Efron (“High School Musical,” “Hairspray”) is a year younger—22 to Pattinson’s over-the-hill 23.
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Yet the real acting honors go to Christian McKay, who does a spot-on impersonation of Orson Welles when that great actor-director was Efron’s age, though McKay looks quite a bit older, but who cares when the man’s theatrical delivery is enough to make one cut back on movies and devote some time—and lots of money—to Broadway theater.
Adapting Robert Kaplow’s novel, Holly Gent Palmo and Vince Palmo re-create some fiction within the framework of Welles’s actual directing of Shakespeare’s “Caesar,” which Welles made contemporary by suiting the actors in the style of Fascist Rome during the twenties and thirties. If you want to know what rehearsals are like for professional stage productions, the madness, the ersatz heart attacks of scared performers, the bellowing of the director who in this case serves as a major actor, this is the film to see. Though photographed not in New York’s 41st Street where the original Mercury Theater stood (now an office building without even a plaque to mark the historic place), Linklater makes good use of the restored Gaiety Theatre in Douglas, the capital of the Isle of Man, population 23,000. Outdoor scenes are set in constructed sets at Pinewood Studios, which devised a replica of the world’s greatest city as it appeared 72 years ago. The British Museum stands in for the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where a Grecian Urn and a young couple standing before it in admiration forms a classy near-conclusion.
Richard Samuels (Zac Efron), a bored, 17-year-old high-school student, gets the chance to rise well beyond his years on a chance encounter with Orson Welles on a street outside the Mercury theater. While Richard prepares for a small role as Lucius in the Shakespeare play—which every middle school student used to know before the advent of the iPhone—he attracts the affection of Sonja (Claire Danes), who serves as a theater assistant manager. Richard is cautioned about Welles’s prima donna status, advised never to criticize the man who is about to make theater history by presenting a souped-up, pared-down, ninety-minute, contemporary version of “Julius Caesar.”
During the hectic weeks of preparation where everything does wrong, Welles surveys the kingdom like a pampered prince, enjoyed assignations with actresses and assistants who do not get paid but look upon this experience as a way to jump-start their careers. When Richard becomes romantically involved with Sonja, competing with the director whose starlets must be willing to head to Welles’s assignation apartment at any time, the big, expected showdown occurs, all witnessed by Mercury Theater co-founder John Houseman (Eddie Marsan) and George Coulouris (Ben Chaplin), in the key role of Marc Antony.
As strikingly handsome and assertive as Efron’s character, Richard Samuels comes across, the show belongs to Christian MacKay in a stellar performance that could well be the talk of the guilds during this awards season.
ME AND ORSON WELLES (Freestyle Releasing)
Unrated. 107 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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