Teenage romance with adult appeal
THE new film Me And Orson Welles is a fictional story set around the real-life 1937 New York staging by Orson Welles of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
FILM REVIEW: ME AND ORSON WELLES
Reviewed by Don Perlgut
Rating: ***
THE new film Me And Orson Welles is a fictional story set around the real-life 1937 New York staging by Orson Welles of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Directed by Richard Linklater, well known for his intelligent young adult romances (Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and The School of Rock), it’s a teen romance that is likely to appeal to an older demographic, despite the starring role taken by young heart-throb Zac Efron (High School Musical and 17 Again).
So we have the paradox of an intelligent, literate and clever romantic drama about a 17-year-old that is really made for adults, not unlike Rocket Science, which had a recent short run in Australian cinemas.
But the similarities don’t end there: both films are based on stories by Jewish men from New Jersey.
Me and Orson Welles started as a successful young adult novel by Jewish writer Robert Kaplow. His main character Richard Samuels (played by Efron, who is also Jewish) makes his way into New York City one day and stumbles upon a crowd outside the Mercury Theatre, where Orson Welles is setting up for his soon-to-open play.
Welles (played by British actor Christian McKay) hires Richard to play Lucius after an impromptu audition on the footpath outside the theatre.
He joins a company with some classic actors -— George Coulouris (Ben Chaplin) as Mark Antony, Joseph Cotten (James Tupper) and Norman Lloyd (Leo Bill), managed by famed actor John Houseman (Eddie Marsan), with Welles taking the part of Brutus in the play.
Also in the play is the luminous Sonja Jones (played by Claire Danes), not apparently a real-life person, with whom young Richard falls in love.
Richard also has a second girlfriend — an obviously Jewish Gretta Adler (played by Zoe Kazan from It’s Complicated, who is the granddaughter of famed film director Elia Kazan).
The play, which was set in modern dress with fascist blackshirt themes (a radical concept at the time), was a fabulous success, propelling Welles’ career along with many of his acting troupe.
Welles comes across as obsessively self-centred, articulate and bombastic, an accomplished flatterer who is used to getting his way with all things, particularly women. He is sensitive to criticism and has a voracious sexual appetite, which appears to need satisfying every day.
This young Welles (only 22 when this film is set, but somehow already carrying a lifetime of experience) has a reputation for mercilessly cutting Shakespeare to manageable lengths: for example, Hamlet in two 30-minute blocks and Julius Caesar down to just 94 minutes.
Welles has most of the film’s best lines, such as when he advises an actress to practice her “consonants, consonants, consonants, and don’t forget the vowels”.
Me and Orson Welles neatly evokes the 1930s, and is shot mostly in brown sepia tones, although with a relatively limited budget (mostly using interior sets), with parts of London and the Isle of Man (no less) standing in for New York City.
The film is full of knowing references to film and theatre of the 1930s, and surely must be one of the finest recent films about stage acting.
Although not as memorable as Shakespeare in Love, it is irrepressibly positive, capturing the egos, claustrophobia and delights that stage work offers.
As Samuels, Efron does a very passable job; the young innocent is intelligent, handsome and cocky. However, in comparison to the quirky characters who surround him, he appears a bit bland and possibly not sufficiently insecure or in need of our sympathy.
I never felt that his character was in much peril and the one scene where he could be really hurt passed without the impact it clearly was supposed to have.
Along the way Samuels learns some hard lessons about the real nature of power, love and heartbreak at the hands of both Sonja and Welles.
But “all’s well that ends well” and nobody is surprised to discover that the film ends on a hopeful note.
Me and Orson Welles is currently screening.
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