Movie Review: Beyond the Sea
By William Sternman
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Beyond
the Sea
Starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and John Goodman
Directed by Kevin Spacey
Written by Kevin Spacey and Lewis Colick
The
perennial question: Can you make a silk purse from a sow’s ear?
Even more pertinent: Why would you even want to?
In the entire history of entertainment, I can’t think of a bigger sow’s ear than singer/composer/actor Bobby Darin.
I first made his acquaintance in 1958, when he introduced a song he wrote on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Who could ever forget these immortal words?
Splish splish, I was takin' a bath
Long about a Saturday night
A rub-a-dub, just relaxin' in the tub
Thinkin' everything was alright
Who, indeed, you might ask. I could—that’s who.
As a matter of fact, I forgot Bobby Darin every chance I could. Every now and then, though, even I was forced to pay attention. One of those rare occasions was in the 1962 movie Pressure Point, in which, playing against type (I prefer to assume), he gave a striking performance as a neo-Nazi patient of prison psychiatrist Sidney Poitier. Then it was back to oblivion for the erstwhile Walden Robert Cassotto.
So, I repeat: Can you make a silk purse from a sow’s ear?
Against all odds, co-writer/director/actor Kevin Spacey has done just that, transforming Darin’s life into a compelling, imaginative, beautifully filmed and (in some cases, literally) choreographed and moving motion picture.
Against even bigger odds, the 45-year-old Spacey makes us accept him as the 20-year-old Darin -- not through makeup, shadowy lighting or filming through gauze or a Vaseline-coated lens (as was done with Lucille Ball in Mame), or even through linoleum, as the older Tallulah Bankhead once quipped would be appropriate for herself -- but through the sheer power of his personality, and a neat plot device that has the older Darin playing his younger self in a movie of his life. (Once it serves its purpose, this MacGuffin is sent back to the Scottish highlands to hunt for lions.) Bobby’s boyhood self (played by William Ullrich) comments on and guides both the older Darin and us through the intricacies of his existence.
This fantasy mystery tour is enlivened from time to time by energetic musical production numbers -- at one point they are literally dancing in the street in the Bronx where Bobby lived -- to portray our hero’s inner feelings. The emotions conveyed this way are contagious and give us a deeper insight into Darin’s character. (I doubt that it would work in all biopics, however—can you imagine Donald Rumsfeld or John Kerry tripping the light fantastic at a career highpoint?)
Biographical flicks force a reviewer to walk a tightrope—on one hand, he must be a fact checker; on the other hand, a drama critic. I prefer to leave the research to someone else. This movie and Spacey’s performance opened up Bobby Darin’s inner self to me in a way few movies ever have. Being Bobby Darin couldn’t always have been fun, nor could being with him. He was infantile, narcissistic, driven, unreasonable and, at times, brilliantly irrational. He lived under a death sentence -- he was supposed to die at 15 because of a rheumatic heart; he actually died at 37 after an open-heart surgery from which he never regained consciousness.
When he lost the best supporting-actor Oscar (for Captain Newman, M.D. in 1963) to Melvyn Douglas (Hud), he threw a destructive tantrum reminiscent of Charles Foster Kane breaking up the furniture when his second wife deserts him.
And yet it’s this very emotional volatility that made him so effective as mental patients in both the 1963 movie and Pressure Point a year earlier.
When he turns political activist and folk singer in the late Sixties, he can’t understand why his screaming fans won’t accept him in his new role. His disappointment is heartbreaking.
This imaginative tour de force loses its creative energy only when it comes to depicting Darin’s marriage to perpetual movie starlet Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth). Here we’re on heavily trodden, if not totally barren ground: Dee complains he’s never there for her; he angrily responds that he has a job to do; she takes to alcohol and drugs. Cut to another song…please.
Unlike Kevin Kline as Cole Porter in De-Lovely, Spacey makes the far less talented Darin come to life as a real human being.
He also shrewdly surrounds himself not with the usual biopic suspects, but with actors who can really act. Like Brenda Blethyn as Darin’s over-indulgent Italian mother, Caroline Aaron as his doting sister, and Greta Scacchi as Dee’s over-protective mom, plus the always dependable John Goodman and Bob Hoskins.
How much the appeal of this movie derives from its subject and how much from Spacey is a moot point, I suppose. My money’s on Spacey. He can turn anyone into a sympathetic human, even an alien (K-PAX). He’s also a smooth singer. He had me humming almost the entire Darin oeuvre on the way home.
"Including 'Splish Splash?'” you ask.
To quote Joanne Woodward in The Long, Hot Summer: “Not the longest day I live.”
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William Sternman's short stories have been published in England, Hungary, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the U.S. His book and movie reviews have appeared in Audience, Films in Review, Bestsellers, The Drummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and www.movie-vault.com. He has been a volunteer tutor at the Center for Literacy since 1998. He received a fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
©
2005 Me Three