Tonight is the Super Bowl of gay television as it was not only the series finale of NBC’s Smash, but the premiere of this above-average TV movie about Liberace. HBO continued their winning streak of biopics for unconventional icons (Al Pacino in You Don’t Know Jack and The Phil Spector Story) with this film, which is just as much about Matt Damon’s boyfriend as it is the legendary Liberace (Michael Douglas, in a sunnily sleazy performance that reminds you of just how good he can be).
I can safely say I haven’t spent 5 minutes really thinking about the life of Liberace and his success was a little before my time (this was a time when a guy like that could still be closeted), so I didn’t really go into this with any preconceived notions or expectations. I just knew that it’s something of a passion project for the underrated craftsman, Stephen Soderbergh, who had to go to HBO to make this movie because Hollywood kept passing. And, sure enough, he makes a sly, winkingly subversive biopic that feels like the cracked mirror version of a standard rags-to-riches (and back to rags) tale.
He seems to be saying that beneath the miles of gaudy fashion and diamond-studded cars, Damon’s naive boyfriend and Liberace’s deceptively “nice” older man are really just a fairly standard couple. Damon’s Scott starts out over-his-head (the primary quality Liberace likes him for) and gets slowly corrupted into plastic surgery and drugs. Liberace laments fame even as he enjoys all its spoils, and he lets it eat away at all his relationships…even though he resents it when people point this out.
It’s a warts-and-all biopic where Liberace isn’t necessarily seen as all that likable. I thought he was the most cunning of sociopaths, a guy whose “always-sunny” outlook and hatred of “negative thinking” actually keeps him from real, beneath-the-surface connection and ever feeling like he’s in the wrong. Soderbergh uses some of his bright, Ocean’s-Eleven cinematography to mimic Liberace’s all-surface worldview, but it’s also a devious reminder of his star’s failure to develop a real attachment to anything but things. Grade: B+