Quite a Biography

Author's Rating:

Pros: Career performance by Rush, good cast, interesting story that moves

Cons: portrait is very different from the movie star you saw onscreen, no early beginnings, discomforting

The Bottom Line: 
A(n) (un)favorable portrait of a movie star who made people laugh, that could also make you cry when you realize that the man behind the mask, was just another mask.

Author's Review
"Your father is a useless, talentless, empty man." says Peter Sellers to his young daughter, Sarah, in one of the actor's many fits of rage. It's perhaps a quote such as this, and the many references to Peter's void personality that bring up the essence of Peter Sellers' inner conflict: he was a man without a personality. Even further enforced earlier by Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Tucci) by calling Peter an empty vessel of which his characters and personalities can roam like phantoms, only a vessel can be full.

That's not to say that this interpretation of one of comedy's most legendary multi-mimics, is just about a guy who was a void of himself. It's also a portrait of a man who wasn't thought of as a deeply humane and sympathetic human being. Rather simply, an immensely difficult man trapped by a persona and squeezed by the pressure of fame. Only to see all of this affect his personal life like a bad oil spill in water. It's actually like watching a moving train wreck that doesn't know when to stop, and watching Peter go through humiliation is almost unbearable, like being rejected by movie star Sophia Loren; or degrading his frequent collaborator Blake Edwards right in front of a full room.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a biography of the silver screen's most famous mimic, Peter Sellers. It doesn't focus on his childhood but the very moments to which he became a household name: when he got his first acting job which lead to a bigger success and so on. But in the process, he became a moving train wreck, dismissive of his loved ones and only watching out for himself. A big heartbreaker shows Peter with his second wife, Britt (Charlize Theron), fully in labor at the hospital which Peter just simply tells her to get it over with, so they can "start filming next week." Scenes like this are tragic, and serve as frequent reminders of the kind of person Peter Sellers was: cold. But that's not to say he wasn't a human being, not completely aware of who he was, but just what happened in the moment and what he thought he should do. It's disheartening to see at the same time, since this movie is like a two hour tragedy, but it's absolutely riveting to see what happens next.

Easily a great actor, Geoffrey Rush is perfectly cast as Sellers. He pulls absolutely no punches in making Sellers genuinely disheartening or sympathetic, only along with the story does Sellers' personality ratchet up another notch. In the beginning of the movie, he starts out as a frustrated actor and loving family man, but by the end, he's a man with a past, frozen in the idea of a man without a personality and completely detached from all. The way Peter's son tries to encourage his father in one of Peter's self destructive fits, shows how close he is to the edge of being an affectionate father, by only offering a limp smile and a simple touch of his son's hair. Geoffrey Rush reveals a dark side in Sellers, when the man behind the mask was the mask itself, full of anger and resentment. There's a sense of discomfort that follows Peter wherever he goes, and you always get this sense of foreboding in nearly every scene. Rush's interpretation of the character is three dimensional with seriously dark edges, and he conveys that with a sense of casualness that seems monstrous, but you have to realize who the subject is.

As for the cast, they're all good but like most biographical films tend to be: the real life subjects are almost walk on roles, appearing in and out of the film like the very beautiful Sonia Aquino as Sophia Loren. Aquino looks great as Loren but doesn't really get to provide any meat to the scenes except be a mere plot puppet to Peter. Miriam Margoyles as Peter's mother does a standout job as the matriarch with a firm grip over her son's shadow, determined to watch him succeed by encouraging and prodding him. But it's in her character's final moments that you realize like Peter's family, that she's also a human being in need of her son's affections. I won't reveal what happens in that scene but it is heartbreaking, and it reminds you of Peter's growing distance between himself and his family. Charlize Theron is okay as Peter's second wife but her character is in the film as if only for a fleeting sequence. She just lends credibility to the scene, not to mention being a name actress, but there are no scenes with emotional levity and Britt. Her character is two dimensional because of the film's screentime, everything gets moved along faster than expected. Emily Watson is essentially the film's female lead and Peter's first wife, Anne. She's really the core of sympathy that can't be found in any of the other people in the film. Watching Anne tolerate Peter's behavior, you can only justify her behavior as being righteous, even more so when she ends up sleeping with an associate of Peter's (which has an interesting beginning of their meeting with Peter, that's never explained but certainly inferred). Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow are exceptional as Stanley Kubrick and Blake Edwards, occasional collaborators of Sellers and perhaps some of the few who understood Sellers the man. Stephen Fry also provides some meaty scenes as a fraudlent advisor of Peter's.

As much a biography as it is a telling nature of a man absorbed by success and eaten alive by his disintegrating personality and talent. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a very unique gem, espousing large parts of Peter's life since, hey, this is a movie and things have to be sped up. It's a movie within a movie which a scene breaks down into a set, and the character becomes Peter Sellers. This might seem confusing as this movie not only focuses on Peter the man, but what people thought of him and around him. It's like American Splendor, another HBO film and biography which takes another unique view of Harvey Pekar by interweaving fiction with fact. But getting back to this film, it covers many parts of his life and what he did: women, drugs, a heart attack, and career disappointments. There are some visual flourishes to the movie as well, like Peter staring at a mirror which bears no reflection, or a hallucinatory near death experience where Peter confronts all his movie characters, just as he is the hot button of a nuclear bomb. Much of the scenes in these films serve as a metaphor for the internal time bomb that is Peter Sellers. This is further enforced by Peter acting as friends and family, complete in makeup that is perhaps meant to say what he thought they thought of him, or what they thought of him through his eyes. Rush does no disappointment playing Sellers as well as his peers, by anchoring the self important, spoiled star along with the man with deep trouble. Stephen Hopkins, who also directed Lost In Space, has a unique talent for visuals and seems to capture each scene with good, strong lighting, relying on the background as much as he does the actors.

For any fan of Peter Sellers, don't go in watching this movie with a favorable attitude. The filmmakers and Geoffrey Rush pull no punches bringing Sellers to the screen as a rather unpleasant guy with inner torment. I don't know whether to call it a cynical viewpoint of Peter Sellers, or a simple biography possibly fabricated to provide real drama. But it does work as a biographical movie, as told by a terrific actor who brings the sense of darkness to a guy, who brought happiness to millions of others.