Joyce Glasser reviews The Critic (September 13, 2024) Cert 15, 95 mins.
The intensity of many scenes and performances from some of Britain’s best actors are almost, but not enough to hold together Anand Tucker’s new period thriller, The Critic, adapted by Patrick Marber (Closer) from film critic-turned-novelist Anthony Quinn’s book Curtain Call.
It is 1934 and along with the rise of the far right in Britain and beyond, the death of Daily Chronicle owner Lord Brooke ushers in a new era. His son, Viscount David Brooke (Mark Strong) announces his strategy of cutting costs and reviving the paper with renewed vigour. It will be a family paper with low tolerance to improper behaviour from politicians or its own staff and a turn away from his father’s tolerance of fascism and cruel, dictatorial opinions.
Feeling as immune to changes in the world outside as he is to changes within his decades long protection by Lord Brooke, drama critic Jimmy Erskine (Ian McKellen), finishes up a copious, boozy company lunch with a cigar. To his colleagues discussing the changes, he proclaims: ‘The mission of the Chronicle is to compete for readers with the Daily f***king Mail. He won’t go after the old guard.’
Jimmy Erskine represents the old guard at a time when drama critics are celebrities who can make or break an actor, director or playwright. They reflect the tyranny of gossip columnists’ and studio heads’ in Hollywood’s the Studio System.
The top critics draw in readers as much for their entertainment value as for their judgments. They have their portraits painted at the company’s expense and can afford editorial assistants, in this case, Tom Tunner (Alfred Enoch, Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter films), Erskine’s editor, typist, driver live in housekeeper and lover.
After forty years of enduring the pressure of thinking of something fresh and word perfect to write about stale plays for the following morning’s edition, Erskine is as cynical as he is intolerant and entitled. He relieves the publication pressure in the early morning hours in clandestine gay clubs, which present new pressures at a time when homosexuality is illegal.
Anticipating another bad review for her daughter Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), Nina’s mother Annabel (Lesley Manville) corners Jimmy at the interval. He is planning his attack, writing his opening lines with a stiff drink in his hand.
Feigning ignorance, she plays the suburban dabbler and tells Jimmy how wonderful Nina and the play are. Furious at this affront, Jimmy summons the manager to remove the trespasser shouting, ‘I must be protected from the public.’
Later, Annabel, who worries about her thirty-something daughter’s future, tells Nina she was too florid with her hands, but articulate and attractive. Nina does want to look good but be a great actress. Jimmy’s increasingly personal attacks will affect her performances as well as her career.
When Jimmy’s excesses compromise the Chronicle, his days are numbered. A scandal in which Jimmy, inebriated, mocks a group of Black Shirts when they stop Tom and him one night and his cruel attacks on Nina, give Brook the ammunition he needs to sack Jimmy on generous terms.
Jimmy’s revenge strategy is cloudy until he learns that Brooke, who is married, has a habit of attending all of Nina Land’s opening nights.
The film focuses on how far Jimmy will go to subvert Brooke, defy the morality police and retain his power, and how far Nina Land will go to protect her career.
Not surprisingly with McKellen as the eponymous critic and Patrick Marber – who wrote Notes on a Scandal, with its twisted plot of manipulation, blackmail and lies – writing the script, that’s pretty far. Jimmy is a master manipulator winning at the expense of others and playing one person against other to accomplish his ends.
Ian McKellen who was once at the mercy of critics, clearly relishes the role of entitled cruelty personified, for Jimmy is a meaty role, as fun to fill as it is to watch. McKellen is equally good at making us laugh at Jimmy’s wit and sharp one liners. What is harder to do is to make Jimmy a great character and McKellen digs deep.
Somewhere in this devilishly noir plot the tension, intrigue and the occasion for Jimmy’s sharp one liners subside and the story starts to unwind. Although not overly complicated, the film loses its forward momentum. Along with the changes of pace and tone you might find yourself worried that you have missed something.
The moments of breathing room between the melodramatic plot points go far to renew the vigour of the early scenes. These include nearly every time Mark Strong appears on camera in a minimalist role to contrast with McKellen’s. It’s a heart-breaking performance. Apologetic and dignified in an unsavoury trap from which he cannot escape, you feel for the man whose vulnerability eclipses his rank and power.
Equally superb is Lesley Manville, who dominates three short scenes, and shows a different side to her character in each, making her the most vivid character in the film. When, stoic but crumbling in grief, she approaches portrait painter Stephen (Ben Barnes) with his hopeful bouquet of flowers, the painful wake of Jimmy’s revenge plan floods the screen with emotional impact. In a cameo, Romola Garai as Cora Wyley who takes over the Chronicle, charismatically commands the screen, but her pronouncements are as unsatisfying as is the anticlimactic ending.
