The Libertine, a Historical Movie

Starring: Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, John Malkovich, Rosamund Pike
Director: Laurence Dunmore

Official website: http://www.miramax.com/thelibertine/

The Libertine is no boring, historical movie. Neither can you classify it as a classics movie like Pride And Prejudice or Elizabeth.

The Libertine is based on the acclaimed stage play of the same name by Stephen Jeffreys. Brash and raw in cinematography, the movie is helmed by first-time director, Laurence Dunmore. The British commercial and music video director brings a gritty and in-your-face realism to the movie, captured mainly on hand-held. Not to be easily upstaged by the movie’s freshness is the movie's main character, John Wilmot a.k.a. the 2nd Earl of Rochester (Johnny Depp).

Provocative, rebellious, daring and yet downright irrepressible in charisma and in genius, you either love or hate the man. Rochester is exiled for kidnapping his heiress bride, his love-hate relationship with King Charles II (John Malkovich) due to his no-holds barred criticisms and mockery on the King and the monarchy, his love and fascination for all things sexual and the arts and his failed affair with a struggling stage actress, Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton). But beneath the show of flamboyance and devil-may-care attitude, he is a man with a brilliant flair for poetry and theatre and hold an abyss-deep earnestness of seeking acceptance from the world that is unable to keep up with him.

The character's complexity is wonderfully played out by the hard-to-define Johnny Depp. Having led an equally heady and unconventional life and career in his early days himself, Depp easily convinces us that he IS Rochester. But as the movie progressed, one could not help but feel that the shadows of Captain Jack Sparrow lurked somewhere in Rochester.

If you felt disgust or some contempt for the man, then Rochester's short-lived life and death at an early age might win him your sympathies. Condemned by the King for his refusal to be involved in politics and betrayed and spurned by his lover, Rochester goes into a never-ending downward spiral. Eventually, he manages to redeem himself before he succumbed to his illness.

As the credits rolled at the movie's end, ask yourself these two questions: was this a man worthy of your sympathy or was it his retribution for his deeds? Or just simply in Rochester's own repeated words, "Do you like me now?"

-- Eleanor Chew