Johnny Depp has built a formidable career on portraying the ‘out there’ character, a gallery of outsiders, eccentrics and louche sophisticates that has defined his cinematic persona. While Captain Jack Sparrow stands as his most iconic and commercially successful creation, the vast majority of his roles have existed outside the realm of mainstream blockbuster fare, appealing instead to a more niche, arthouse or cult cinema audience. Depp has frequently earned—and deserved—praise for his artistic daring and his relentless drive to experiment and broaden his range. However, even his considerable and often mesmerising talent has, on occasion, proven insufficient to elevate fundamentally weak or misfiring material. A prime, and rather glaring, example of this dynamic can be found in the 2004 period biopic The Libertine, a film that struggles mightily beneath the weight of its own ambitions and a profound directorial miscalculation.
Adapted by Stephen Jeffreys from his own 1994 stage play, the film is set in the Restoration era, a period the opening titles describe as English society’s vigorous attempt to compensate for all it had been denied during the dour Puritan rule: drinking, theatre, and outright debauchery. At its centre is John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester (Depp), a historically significant poet famed as much for his scathing wit as for his spectacularly rakish lifestyle. In a bleak prologue, Wilmot breaks the fourth wall to address the audience directly, warning them in a gravelly, sardonic tone that “you will not like me.” This confessional, confrontational opening sets a tone the rest of the film cannot hope to sustain. The narrative proper begins in 1675, charting Wilmot’s split existence between his country estate—and his patiently loyal wife, Elizabeth (Rosamund Pike)—and his life in London. There, he immerses himself in a world of drinking, whoring, and carousing with the so-called “Merry Gang,” which includes the playwright George Etheredge (Tom Hollander). Wilmot’s penchant for brutally frank and profane speech has recently earned him exile from the court of King Charles II (John Malkovich). Upon his return to favour, he turns his razor-sharp mind to the theatre, becoming the patron and lover of a young actress, Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), whom he coaches to stardom. His final, spectacular fall from grace is precipitated by the scandalous court performance of his sexually explicit play, Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, which personally offends the King. As his body deteriorates from syphilis, Wilmot performs one last surprising service for Charles by casting a crucial vote in the House of Lords, before retreating to his estate to die at the age of 33, surrounded by his forsaken family.
As one would expect, Johnny Depp delivers a performance of committed, grubby intensity. He fully embodies one of the least sympathetic characters in his filmography, a man who revels unapologetically in his own excesses, even as they sow misery for his family, his lovers, and ultimately himself. Depp captures Rochester’s brilliant, self-destructive contradictions—the fierce intelligence corroded by cynicism, the poetic sensitivity drowned in brandy. He is ably supported by a capable cast. Tom Hollander is reliably excellent as the comparatively ‘normie’ Etheredge, a voice of weary reason. John Malkovich, also a producer on the film, offers a strangely subdued turn as Charles II, a monarch attempting, and largely failing, to govern the very era of excess he inaugurated. Rosamund Pike is particularly affecting, bringing a tragic dignity and palpable hurt to the role of the devoted wife. Where the casting falters, however, is in the central relationship with Elizabeth Barry. Despite Samantha Morton’s own considerable talents, she lacks any discernible chemistry with Depp; their scenes together feel more like theatrical exercises than a passionate, transformative affair, which critically undermines a key emotional arc.
Yet, this talented ensemble can only do so much with the material provided. Jeffreys’ screenplay, perhaps struggling to condense the play’s breadth, often burdens the actors with dialogue that lurches uneasily between the faux-Jacobean florid and the abrasively, self-consciously vulgar. The film assumes a working familiarity with Restoration politics and figures that will leave many viewers adrift, rendering large sections of court intrigue merely confusing rather than compelling.
The film’s most fatal flaw, however, lies in its direction. First-time director Laurence Dunmore, whose background was in commercials and music videos, demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the project’s needs. He has fashioned a film about one of history’s most riotously colourful and decadent periods that is visually dour, relentlessly unpleasant, and, astonishingly, quite boring. This is largely due to the disastrous cinematography by Alexander Melman, who bathes every scene in a pall of desaturated greens, browns, and murky darkness. The palette is so persistently grim that it leeches all vitality from the proceedings; even the film’s rampant nudity and sexual activity appear curiously unerotic, merely another form of grubby, joyless transaction. The overall effect is less a critique of debauchery than a visual dampening of it, as if watching the era’s exuberant hedonism through a pane of grimy, bog-water-stained glass. Even the contributions of the accomplished composer Michael Nyman, a specialist in period drama, are lost in the morass, his score unable to stir a narrative so leadenly presented.
The film’s fate seemed sealed from its first public outing as a “work-in-progress” at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. Released a year later with additional scenes, it was met with a largely negative reception, even from critics typically sympathetic to such historical, character-driven fare. In the end, Rochester’s opening prophecy, “you will not like me,” proves grimly justified. It applies not only to the character but to the film itself. The Libertine is a frustrating, joyless experience, a cinematic endeavour where a masterful central performance and a capable supporting cast are utterly betrayed by a lack of directorial vision and a catastrophically misjudged aesthetic. It function as a curio, likely to be appreciated only by the most devout of Depp’s completists, who may find value in witnessing the actor’s commitment to the role, even as the film around him collapses into a beautifully appointed, yet profoundly lifeless, period muddle.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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