Tom Courtenay

  • The Dresser (1983)

    The Dresser (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) It’s often interesting when the movies take a look at a different realm and presents us characters wholly invested in it. With The Dresser, we get to spend some time with a WW2-era theatrical actor and his personal assistant. It’s an unequal but surprisingly codependent relationship: The actor is a wreck when he’s not onstage and obviously needs to have his hand held throughout a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, our meek assistant is someone who finds his purpose in like in being the manager of an incredible yet incredibly flawed stage legend. As the story begins, we understand the predicament: In trying to deliver Shakespeare to the British countryside even as bombs are falling, our travelling troupe has to contend with destroyed theatres, substandard supporting actors (given that the best are at war) and the personal failings of its star. The theatrical origin of the story is most apparent in its middle section, almost entirely spent in the dressing room as the assistant cajoles a barely functional veteran actor into delivering a performance. There are plenty of theatrical lore details here, enough to create the magic of the theatre and to show the madness that can come with it. The Dresser is a clever film, perhaps a bit too long, certainly excellent in the quality of its dialogues and directed competently by Peter Yates. The ending is as tragic yet appropriate as they come. Albert Finney is impressive as the temperamental, almost crackpot veteran actor, while Tom Courtenay is less flashy but far more interesting as the assistant. It’s not an exceptionally memorable film, but it does offer a fascinating glimpse backstage of a theatrical production held together by mere threads, and as such is likely to fascinate anyone who’s ever been interested or involved in theatre. As a mandatory stop on the Oscar-nominee tour, The Dresser is not a bad experience.

  • Doctor Zhivago (1965)

    Doctor Zhivago (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2018) I have little patience for anything these days, so getting me to sit down for three-and-a-half-hours to watch a Russian novel turned into an epic movie, even a David Lean movie, is asking too much. It took me four days to get through Doctor Zhivago, and I kept going only because the film is of some historical interest. Even then, the journey was gruelling. It’s not that the film is 193 minutes long—it’s that even for that amount of time, not a lot actually happens. It is a generational romance set against the backdrop of early-twentieth-century Russia, and yet it feels uncomfortably small, with a handful of characters bouncing against each other even in a country as large as Russia. To be fair, Omar Sharif is fantastic as the titular Zhivago, and Julie Christie isn’t bad as the lead female character. This being said, the show is stolen by smaller roles: Rod Steiger is delightfully evil as a well-connected politician, while Tom Courtenay has a great arc as the initially meek Pasha. Still, much of Doctor Zhivago unfolds slowly, with characters having intimate conversations while the country goes up in flames somewhere in the background. For an epic, it feels curiously small-scale and focused on melodramatic plot threads. Reading about the film, its troubled production and the historical context of the original novel is more interesting than the film itself—as I was wondering how a Russian film could be produced by a big Hollywood studio in the middle of the Cold War, the film doesn’t exactly act as pro-Soviet propaganda … and adapting the novel was seen as a big gesture against the USSR given that it had banned the book. Still, the result is an often-exasperating experience as nothing happens for a very long time. The film’s high points (such as the moments immediately preceding its intermission) aren’t, quite enough to make up for the rest, including an even more punishing framing device that adds even more minutes to an already bloated result. But at last it’s done: I have watched Doctor Zhivago and don’t have to watch it ever again in order to say that I did.