Prick Up Your Ears

Director Stephen Frears has often picked up interesting subjects for his films. 'Prick Up Your Ears' is based on the relationship between famous writer Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Set in the 60s, this was during the time when 'being gay' in public was considered a criminal offense in parts of UK. Joe Orton is confident, talented, mellow and liked by everyone while his partner Halliwell is comparatively shy and distant and resentful of Joe's success as he claims to be the man behind his partner's success and complains about not receiving enough credit for it.

Frears depicts the relationship quite sensibly. There is almost always a conflict or a disagreement in Orton and Halliwell's sequences but the love is always apparent. While Kenneth's insecurity worsens as Joe climbs every step up towards success, Joe always stands by him. The viewer is also given brief glimpses of Joe's relationship with his mother, sister and confidant Peggy. The depiction of the 60's gay culture is also intriguing.

The execution isn't first rate as the cinematography is flat and the editing leaves a lot to be desired. The pacing is very slow. The lighting could have used some improvement.

The acting is superb. Gary Oldman is spellbinding as Joe Orton. Even though he is more commonly known for his villainous roles, movies like these prove what a versatile actor he is. Alfred Molina is brilliant as Kenneth. A foxy Julie Walters makes her presence felt in a limited role. Vanessa Redgrave is remarkable in a brief but memorable role.

'Prick Up Your Ears' is an interesting psychological character study and true crime drama. In addition to the wonderful performances, the writing is first rate, especially the witty dialogues loaded with humour. The movie ends on a note of leaving the viewer to wonder what would have become of Orton's life had he still lived. Here was a man who had everything going for him...except one thing that ended his life.

Gary Oldman follows up his unknowable Sid Vicious in SID AND NANCY with an equally elusive Joe Orton in what is ultimately a riff on A STAR IS BORN. As Orton's star rises, that of his needier, more vulnerable lover Kenneth Halliwell, played with compassion by Alfred Molina, declines.

The screenplay, by Alan Bennett, is based on critic John Lahr's biography of Orton. Bennett makes the writing of the biography part of the story, and briefly tries to parallel the relationship of Lahr and his wife Andrea (played by Wallace Shawn and Lindsay Duncan), but I'm not sure that it helps the film much. Splitting the story's focus in its early sections removes us from Orton himself. That's who we want to stay with. The only real benefit the Lahr section gives us is one wonderful scene between Ms Duncan and the great Joan Sanderson as her hyper-middle class mother, decoding shorthand sections of Orton's diary to reveal highly salacious behaviour. Ms Sanderson's deadpan performance, enthusiastically uncovering Orton's meaning while remaining steadfastly unshocked, is one of the highlights of the film for me.

There are a dozen or so cameos from other wondrous actors, mostly known for their theatre work -- Margaret Tyzack, John Moffatt, Julie Legrand, Selina Cadell -- as well as substantial support from Francis Barber and Janet Dale as, respectively, Orton's warm-hearted sister and eccentric landlady.

Ultimately, the film rests on the shoulders of the central trio: Orton, Halliwell and Orton's agent, the redoubtable Peggy Ramsay. She is played by Vanessa Redgrave in a glowing performance, that helps to hold the disparate parts of the film together.

Molina's work I've already praised. So we're back to Gary Oldman, who is absolutely brilliant as Orton. What Oldman is able to do is to accept, rather than explain, his characters. He thinks it's OK not to make them totally knowable, and he's right.

Director Stephen Frears is equally difficult to pigeon-hole. He favours realism on the one hand, but on the other he is capable of pulling off highly-charged scenes - like the orgy in a public lavatory -- which might floor less gifted artists.

All in all, an entertaining and informative film, not without its flaws. In particular, its depiction of gay men's lives in the late fifties and early sixties is interestingly honest.

The single best biographical film I've ever seen. Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, and Vanessa Redgrave are all brilliant. (Check out Simon Callow's book "Love Is Where It Falls" for more information on the Vanessa Redgrave character.) Much of the last third of the film is difficult to take, but it is nevertheless essential viewing for anyone interested in Joe Orton. And it needs to be said that there is real joy in the film as well -- particularly in the mischievous looks that cross Oldman's face while cruising tea rooms. Has any other het actor played gay so utterly convincingly?

Before writing this I saw an interview with Kenneth Williams best known as being part of the Carry On troupe. He gave some interesting insights into Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. As a gay man himself Williams experienced and felt the same things in the days before sodomy laws were repealed in the United Kingdom, considerably before they were in the USA. The pressures of living as a couple increased exponentially especially a May/August couple as Orton and Halliwell were.

Joe Orton whose work I'd like to see and is curiously unavailable is played by Gary Oldman and we see him as a young writer befriended and mentored by Kenneth Halliwell who is older and played by Alfred Molina. Williams says that in his opinion there is no doubt the influence that Halliwell had on Orton's work. But they were two very different types of personality and probably were fated to come apart. Especially when Halliwell who mentored Orton was not finding any success with his own writing. In the end it destroyed them.

Great Britain had some strict sodomy laws as Oscar Wilde was living testimony to. Gay artists however got different treatments depending on who their patrons were. Oscar Wilde and the Orton/Halliwell duo in their respective generations were treated one way. But Noel Coward moved at the highest levels of British society and he had a Teflon like immunity from what befell the other three.

The film is told in flashback with Vanessa Redgrave as Orton's agent telling his biographer Wallace Shawn what the two were about individually and separately. Both Oldman and Molina were brilliant.

I can't help thinking that if they could have been traditionally married back then, they could also have been traditionally divorced when the love faded. That certainly would have been better all around.

But then we would not have had this fascinating tragedy.

I don't usually enjoy biopics, but PRICK UP YOUR EARS is a glorious exception. Many biopics don't have strong narrative arcs (simply because people's lives generally don't), but this one does -- primarily because it focuses on the rapid deterioration of the relationship between playwright Joe Orton and failed novelist Kenneth Halliwell. With the obvious exception of the horrific conclusion, the issues faced by these two London writers will probably ring painfully true for many members of the audience. Who hasn't felt like Halliwell at some point -- or even Orton, dealing with a Halliwell-esquire partner?

This is where PRICK UP YOUR EARS succeeds while so many other biopics fail: while it does not shy away from the sensationalistic aspects of Orton's life, it never neglects the complex relationship beating at the center of the narrative. I can safely say it's one of the rare cases where I found myself relating on a human level to the biographical subjects, instead of dryly watching them from afar.

Director Stephen Frears deserves kudos for his warm, understated approach. It's almost hard to praise his directing because it's so unobtrusive; but this is exactly his strong point. He is confident in the story's inherent power, so he wisely gets out of the way and lets it unfold naturally.

And he is helped marvelously by the uniformly great performances; there simply isn't a wrong note struck by the cast. Even supporting roles, like those of Orton's sister and brother-in-law, feel like real human beings. Of course, the real standouts are Oldman, Molina and Redgrave.

Though his physical appearance isn't dramatically altered, Gary Oldman still seems unrecognizable compared to his previous work; this is how strongly he becomes Orton. His carefree swagger is by turns charming and infuriating. You understand why Halliwell is both entranced and insanely frustrated with him. He also looks a little bit like Dana Carvey - just by the by.

Molina is no less astonishing. Bald at 25, frustrated, neurotic, sexually incapable... the character is a hulking mass of awkwardness, but somehow he evokes tremendous sympathy. You alternately want to hug this guy and shake him silly. (The scene in which Orton is informed of his mother's death is heartbreaking - for both men's reactions.)

Meanwhile, Redgrave is a delight. Her line readings are exquisite and she gives the movie a crisp cleverness without crossing the line into self-indulgence.

For all the tragic and uncomfortable elements of Orton and Halliwell's relationship, the movie still features some hilarious scenes. The cheeky title, Orton and Halliwell's divergent accounts of their lifestyle together, the conversation with Brian Epstein, and Halliwell's "we were having a conversation" gave the movie a gleeful edge of naughtiness -- one the viewer suspects was strongly inspired by Orton's own approach to life and work.

In short, I highly recommend this movie. Though its description may seem sensationalistic -- a gay man brutally murders his successful young lover -- PRICK UP YOUR EARS triumphs as both a simple human drama and as a biography in which its subjects are made more intimate rather than more remote.