It paints a pretty horrible picture of Peter Sellers in places, a lot like Ray did of Ray Charles, and I don’t know much about either; but, as was the case with with the Charles bio-pic, if this is anywhere close to an accurate portrayal, then I actually think Sellers would approve of this movie. In fact, I think he’d love it.

While being sexy, funny, even chauvinistic at times, it still goes to depths you really wouldn’t expect from any director dealing with a bio-pic, let alone the guy whose past filmography includes Lost in Space, Predator 2 and an Elm Street sequel – for example when Geoffrey Rush plays different characters in Sellers’ life, like Sellers used to play different characters in his movies, at one point even “ADR’ing” a scene between Sellers and his wife, rose-tinting the scene to make it more like a romantic interlude than the argument it was in real life. A lot of the time when we see Rush as Sellers playing these other characters in his life, from mother to wife to director, we’re really seeing another character in private complaining about the man in question; it’s almost as if Sellers always knew his faults, and probably could have easily portrayed every single person he ever knew quite accurately onscreen, something I really relate to personally.

If I measured my opinion of movies based on the number of tears shed, and I’ll be honest, I often do, then this one would be way up there. There’s a realism in this movie that I simultaneously crave and fear. Like I said, I know little about its subject, but if this movie is anywhere near an accurate portrayal, then I find myself frighteningly similar to its main character; I’d almost go so far as to say there are moments in this movie where I almost felt it was about me, like when Sellers shuts himself in the closet like a child, because he’s done something bad. I mentioned the multiple character portrayals by Rush – there’s a moment when Stephen Fry, who plays Sellers’ agent, suddenly takes on the persona of his mother, and it reduced me to sobs quite frankly for reasons I can’t fathom, it’s a beautiful moment.

The cast is quite extraordinary. Rush is, of course, great as Sellers, but with him comes possibly the best cast entire family I’ve ever seen – Emily Watson, Miriam Margolyes and Peter Vaughan playing wife, mother and father respectively, with cameos from John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci and Nigel Havers as Blake Edwards, Stanley Kubrick and David Niven. Steve Pemberton of The League of Gentlemen plays Harry Secombe of The Goon Show, which, while I can’t comment on the realism of his portrayal (I only know of Harry Secombe later in his life when he presented Songs of Praise, etc), is a very neat touch since The Goon Show was arguably the original League of Gentlemen.

What makes me love this movie is how it sucked me into a person’s life, true or false, so completely, to the point that it’s almost dangerous. I’m always a little sceptical of bio-pics and I find myself thinking, “yeh, but I didn’t know them so I don’t know if this is true,” but there’s a point at which you have to give in, and this movie, basis be damned, lets you into the life of a man who behaved like a little boy and worse, whose behaviour was indulged, and worse, he knew it was bad, and yet, he carried on, because, dammit, it was fun. I’ve seen a few documentaries of the real Peter Sellers and I think this is a pretty accurate portrayal, and like I said I think he would be thrilled by this, the movie of his life, even if it portrays him as “bad” in places, because to me personally, he, like the best of people, never really had a clear opinion of “good” and “bad” .... there was just “fun” or “boring” (I realise that’s a semi-quote from Natural Born Killers, that’s unfortunate). He lived his life to the fullest and I guess that’s why I’ve had some interest in him for as long as I remember.

When it comes down to it, this is the tale of a person who was perhaps (and for good reason, perhaps) thought to be completely self-obsessed, but who was in fact only obsessed with his profession, yet whose profession was all about denying the “self” into which they was born. To me that’s real food for thought. It fizzles out towards the end but it’s still a very impressive effort. Most intriguing to me is the final little sequence dealing with Being There, possibly my favourite Sellers movie. If this movie is anything to go by, then this seems to have been the role he most related to, and to me that’s sort of frightening. In the movie we see him being faced with the choice between the commercial Pink Panther sequel and this mystical script he appears to be obsessed by. We see the the premiere of the Panther sequel he chose to do first, which, again I’m not certain, but I’m guessing must be based on fact, where Sellers calls director Blake Edwards “middling talent,” insults the audience of the movies, talks about mediochrity. Again, like I said, I don’t know if this is the real Peter Sellers (and if this movie is anything to go by, I don’t think there’s any way we can know who was the real Sellers), but I’d like to think it was. I miss personalities like this in showbiz. In fact – I don’t think I’ve ever even known personalities like this in showbiz in my lifetime.

Y’know, I’ve written more about this movie than I thought I’d write, and I know it’s probably all disjointed for which I apologise (I’ll admit, this and the last review were written while watching, a no-no I know but I currently have no choice, I have too much to do lol). In a nutshell, I want to say that this movie made me cry in a number of places for a number of reasons I really can’t explain and I think it’s gonna take a number of subsequent viewings to figure that out, that’s why I’m giving it 5 stars.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2005 at 1:20 am in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.