Dorian Gray **** (2009, Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Rebecca Hall, Ben Chaplin, Douglas Henshall, Emilia Fox, Max Irons) – Classic Movie Review 3,033

Ben Barnes is perfect as the hedonistic, corrupt young Dorian Gray in director Ol Parker’s smart, sensual and well-tuned 2009 film of Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Looking and sounding just right, Ben Barnes is perfect as the hedonistic, corrupt young Dorian Gray in director Ol (Oliver) Parker’s smart, sensual, and well-tuned 2009 film of Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The finely polished screenplay by Toby Finlay makes some incisive and felicitous departures from the classic book but keeps faithfully to its spirit.

For example, the addition of the Emily Wotton character (Rebecca Hall) allows Dorian’s inner struggle to be convey without a voiceover and through her Dorian finds some redemption and Lord Henry gets payback for what he does to Dorian. As everyone knows, Dorian of course is the man who keep his youthful beauty eternally, but his painting in the attic starts to reveal his inner ugliness.

Colin Firth is exactly right, too, as the corrupting Lord Henry Wotton, relishing the Wildean epigrams and witty dialogue beautifully (‘People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame’), with Ben Chaplin the other hit turn as Basil Hallward, the man who paints the famous picture.

Parker makes the movie seem fresh, relevant, modern and sexy, while paradoxically bringing on the dark and repressive Victorian London atmosphere successfully. The gay scene with the pretty boy anti-hero starting to make out with the painter of his portrait seems to have surprised some viewers and delighted others. This is indeed quite a gay movie, and appropriately so.

Also in the cast are Rebecca Hall, Douglas Henshall, Emilia Fox as Lady Victoria Wotton, Maryam d’Abo, Caroline Goodall, Pip Torrens and Fiona Shaw.

Firth and Fox, who play the married Lord and Lady Wotton couple in this film, played siblings in BBC TV’s Pride and Prejudice (1995).

Peter Firth played Dorian in a 1976 BBC TV production of The Picture of Dorian Gray (with John Gielgud and Jeremy Brett), which was also filmed in 1944 as The Picture of Dorian Gray with Hurd Hatfield. It was remade in 1970 as Dorian Gray with Helmut Berger, in 2004 as Dorian with Ethan Erickson and Malcolm McDowell, and in 2005 as The Picture of Dorian Gray with Josh Duhamel.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3,033

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