Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis
Have I Seen it Before: Never.
Did I Like It: You know, kind of?
I never really had any interest in the work of Elizabeth Taylor. I think because as she became more well known for her marriages than her acting, the pictures fell by the wayside. If you’re born after 1980, she’s just that lady that was in the perfume commercials and showed up in The Flintstones (1994)*.
So, it’s to my enduring surprise she (and Richard Burton for that matter) could be in a movie so deceptively simple, and so watchable. Maybe Cleopatra (1963) is actually worth a watch? For that matter, the forging of a real movie couple usually spells certain doom for the watchability of a film, but in this context it’s hard not to believe the long stretches of fury punctuated by intermittent moments of something resembling affection. It has to be hard to forge a play written to within an inch of its life into something like pseudo-documentary, but I’m struggling to think of an instance where Mike Nichols fell short of making a great film.
His skills at theatrical adaptation are unparalleled, too. I recently watched Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and was struck by the fact that very little was done to the source material, almost to the point where the film becomes a filmed stage performance. In this film, however, the camera bobs and weaves through the setting, elevating things beyond their origin. I almost feel like a clandestine voyeur to these people and their lives, hiding behind what is happening. It’s a much more theatrical experience than just placing the camera on a tripod and hoping everything will work out.
* I’ve never been more convinced that my generation was full of crap than when I just typed that sentence.