I watched two biopics this weekend. Both had been well reviewed, and both featured bravura lead performances from actors who played, in both cases, bona fide geniuses. You walked out of the movie knowing more about these geniuses\u2019 careers, their achievements, their impact on the world. But both movies were a mess: filled with pacing issues and downward-spiral clich\u00e9s. Which, I guess, makes a certain kind of sense. Most real lives have third-act problems.<\/p>\n
There are exceptions, of course, both in life and in art\u2014you don\u2019t need me to enumerate the pleasures of\u00a0Lawrence of Arabia<\/em>. And I am all for a long life well lived. A cradle-to-grave biopic presents certain inevitable challenges, especially if your subject\u2019s death is a peaceful one. And the clumsiness in such films is no crime; most of them don\u2019t do much more than fall into well-trodden, safe paths; after the inevitable narcissistic degradation\u2014the drug-fueled rages, the alienation of faithful retainers\u2014we see the hero, more or less well aged by makeup, making amends, embracing, basking in former glories and the comforts of old age. Sometimes he sings.<\/p>\n But what would happen if, instead of the triumphant reunion, the bygones being bygones, we ended with something along the lines of a Frozen Peas commercial? I\u2019m thinking of the infamous recording of an old, diminished Orson Welles caviling over the script for a 1970 British peas commercial<\/a> by a company called Findus. It\u2019s a short clip\u2014a mere four or five minutes. But there\u2019s more rage, tragedy, and pathos packed into it\u2014more truth about a life\u2014than in most of the baggy biopics of the last ten years combined.<\/p>\n