Beyond The Sea Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)January 6th, 2005
Beyond the Sea
Rental
In a year that has brought us some truly exceptional biopics, Beyond the Sea is not playing in the clearest of fields. While there is no denying Kevin Spacey's acting and singing performance is absolutely terrific, and while the interesting task of directing this tale (also
Spacey) poses a unique challenge what with all the funky interesting story elements, I have to say that the film just doesn't swing.
Bobby Darin, its subject, swings like a bell. He is interesting to watch, and the story structure, which is sort of a combination of a post-mortem kind of theatrical framing device, like De-Lovely, but also a fantasy flashback, like the Singing Detective, is presented clearly and creatively. As a biopic, the only thing I know more about Bobby Darin, who he is and was, is a few cold facts. I don't feel we ever glimpse or touch Bobby's soul, what drives him, where his music comes from.
Some may disagree. Some older folks who were fortunate enough to follow his career in his heyday might see the primal instinct beneath "I just love music," but I found the whole affair missing a big chunk of heart. I was moved by events, I was surprised by turns, and I admire the performances (especially Nina Cassotto Maffia played by Caroline Aaron) greatly. The period feel is tremendous - every shot, especially in the salad days, has that peculiar color palette you only see in magazines of the period, a weird sort of orangey turquoise color balance that just reeks of Camelot. Perhaps writer Lewis Colick, whose career appears to have begun in the 1980's, was also too late to know the feel of the man he was re-immortalizing.
Let's get back to the good stuff. Spacey clearly loves this icon of a man, loves inhabiting him. In a way he's so unrecognizably Spacey (think American Beauty or The Usual Suspects) that you just swim along with this gregarious, vaguely pushy stranger Bobby Darin, until you realize it's Kevin Spacey (rarely). What really worked for me was having Spacey interact with the boy playing young Bobby, newcomer WilliamUllrich. He has the gentleness and the guttersnipe spunk to imply the man inside whom we are told Bobby Darin will become. All we truly see in Darin is in this boy; Spacey is (as Darin apparently
was) always mugging for the public. Darin loved it, and Spacey is having a lot of fun too. I needed to see more behind the curtain, and I was sorry that it was relegated to quick tidbits about his family and his wife Sandra Dee, much of it presented through acrimony. I should applaud the film for not treating him as some holy shrine to lounge singing, instead showing some ugly parts, but the end result of the film was just a general lack of knowing Darin any better.
Definitely rent it for the filmmaking, the songs and staging, and the groovy colors. But just rent it.
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These reviews (c) 2004-05 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at:
http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource
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