The Libertine

The Libertine (2004) never caught my interest, so I can give only inchoate impressions. Perhaps I should have paid more attention. It is a latter-day version of the Rake’s Progress, and its makers do their best to give graphic, gritty Hogarthian impressions of Restoration England. Johnny Depp plays John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, famous poet and womanizer who by the age of 33 had died of syphilis.

Depp’s acting is, as usual, excellent. The film is stagey, based as it is on the play of the same title by Stephen Jeffries (who also wrote the film’s screenplay). It strives with due diligence to portray the libertine sexuality of Restoration England, and sometimes it does so with the exhibitionist fervor of a 14 year old trying to embarrass his parents. In one scene Wilmot is riding to London with his wife in a carriage. He inserts his hand between his wife's legs and brings her to orgasm. The motions of Wilmot’s hand and the expressions on his wife’s face and her breathing make clear what is happening. But just to make sure that the audience has no doubts, the camera provides close-up shots of her modestly covered crotch, with Wilmot’s hand at work. At first Wilmot's wife doesn't welcome his ministrations, but then she responds, involuntarily.

Is the scene gratuitous? It does give us a particular perspective on this husband and wife relationship. It shows how Wilmot expresses and asserts himself, how he controls women with his sexual magnetism (whatever that is). The scene is too long and not especially pertinent to the subject at hand (no pun intended): it establishes an essentially prurient tone that carries through for the entirety of the film. I'm not a prude about these matters, but it's clear enough when a film is pandering.

The film itself is a kind of play within a play. In the first scene, after a series of screens provide historical information about Wilmot and Restoration England, Wilmot emerges from the void and begins to speak of his life, promising the audience that it won’t like him. He returns at the end of the film to remind the audience of his prediction. In the film his friend George Etherege is writing a play about him. (In reality, the play was titled The Man of Mode, 1676). There is therefore much self-reflexivity here.

The film focuses on the rise and fall of Wilmot’s career, his relationship with his wife, who loves him dearly despite everything about him, and his relationship with the actress Elizabeth Barry, whom he rescues from an un[promising career as an actress by teaching her to act. He loves her with a passion, but ultimately he serves merely as a stepping stone as she rises to fame on the London stage. The film is also about Wilmot’s friendship with Charles II, son of the murdered Charles I. Charles II rises to the throne with the restoration of the monarchy. He returns artistic and personal freedoms to England, but things go too far and in the film he is constantly at odds with Wilmot and other artists, writers, and actors who are pushing the bounds of public decency both in their personal lives and their art.

Despite all its visual profligacy, we’re asked to believe this is a moral tale. Wilmot is redeemed by love—his wife’s love and his love for Elizabeth Barry, by his friendship with Charles II, always willing in the end to forgive Wilmot’s insults and insolence. Disfigured and crippled near the end of his life, he gives a speech in Parliament that helps defeat legislation that would have impeached the brother of Charles II for being a Catholic. This is seen as a redemptive act of friendship. At the end of the film Wilmot dies in his wife’s arms.

Depp is impressive in the film, which itself overall is sterile and lifeless. What redeems it is his acting. This is, after all, and despite itself, a film about redemption.