Reseñas de la crítica

Soderbergh deserves unambiguous credit here since, once again, his late work tackles one of the major problems of our times. How do bodies exist, and how are they conditioned, by late capital? In Liberace's case, he made himself a gargantuan spectacle, all feathers and fur, to distract not just from who he was underneath but what he was.

Steven Soderbergh claimed to have watched films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder as inspiration for his underrated Bubble (2005), but Behind the Candelabra... strikes me as his most Fassbinderian movie. This blackly funny (and sometimes horrific) showbiz saga, about pianist-showman Liberace's unhealthy relationship with a much-younger man, echoes numerous works by the great German filmmaker.

This is Soderbergh at his finest. Along with feasting upon Liberace's rococo mansion, in which there's an ornate vase for every flat surface, you can appreciate the "retired" director's expert camerawork and staging, e.g., the scene in which Scott's predecessor (wearing white short-shorts) squats by the pool to warn him that he's no less expendable, shot through the soon-to-be-ousted houseboy's legs... It's easily among the best mainstream films of the decade so far.

While the decline of the central relationship contributes to a loss of shape and momentum in Behind the Candelabra's back half, the film is still one of Soderbergh's most potent attempts to prove that a star-laden Hollywood drama can simultaneously boast artistic flair, adult complexity, and populist appeal.

There are scenes, particularly during the breakup, that will be catnip for drag queens, but Soderbergh's overriding perspective is neither arch nor cruel. The camerawork, peering from doorways down empty, opulent halls, captures the paradox of palatial kitsch, its blend of liberation and claustrophobia.

As a love story goes, "Behind the Candelabra" is opaque; as a vision of a marriage-like relationship, it's a sort of black box. What brings Liberace and Thorson together is no mystery, or, rather, it's the ultimate mystery; what drives them apart is nothing unusual. What's exciting about the film is the unfolding of the utterly ordinary under the guise of the extraordinary.

Playing the part of Scott Thorson, the innocent young stud whom Liberace seduces, reduces, and abandons, Matt Damon more than holds his own against the scene-devouring Douglas. Indeed, the two-hour movie comes perilously close to becoming a dull morality tale until love-sickness kicks in and Damon gets his performance going... "Behind the Candelabra" is an essentially serious movie, not least in its meditation on the uses of denial and the representation of camp.

Like mother and son, and, for that matter, Liberace and Scott, [Soderbergh's] relationship with entertainment is not one lacking for passion or dedication. Thematic kin to Clint Eastwood's terrific J. Edgar, Behind the Candelabra is powerful, funny, and emotionally rigorous, and though it might act as a fiery and forceful resignation, in conjunction with Side Effects, it also serves as an uncommonly heartfelt Dear John letter.

The film works like memory, the early scenes passing by like the snippets one might recall years later of just how one got into that relationship that ended poorly, before the later scenes allow Scott's first meetings with Liberace to have their full weight. And then, just as in memory, the film seems unable to look away from the true devastation... and the mind is left turning them over and over, wondering if there was ever anything worth preserving there in the first place.

Every scene seems carved from marble. A few play out in long takes, with few cuts, at times from medium distance. The tale's elegant purposefulness suggests that Soderbergh and his screenwriter Richard LaGravanese (The Fisher King, Living out Loud) came into the project knowing what they wanted to say and how they would say it. There's a solid, patient, confident quality to this movie that's rarely seen in modern mainstream cinema.

This isn't a director in a holding pattern, Soderbergh is constantly looking for new ways of telling stories, new ways of using digital images to articulate characters' feelings or a film's mood. He's so exciting to watch right now, every time he makes a movie there are shots we've never seen before. I don't know if any other American filmmaker is more inventive right now with choosing where to place the camera, how to frame the image, how to use focus, etc.

[Soderbergh] reminds me of mid to late 60s Yoshishige Yoshida: exhibiting a desire to cut to a new angle for the sake of new spatial activation, visual refreshment. Soderbergh isn't nearly as striking a compositionalist as Yoshida, however, so the arbitrariness shines through all the more. Tonally, this produces a cool, cerebral aspect to most his pictures. This, actually, is for me one of the strongest characteristics of his work...