Luke
stu-kicks
CibbuanoLenny
March 6th 2007 09:33
Lenny (1974)
'Lenny' is a dark and smokey biopic of controversial 50s and 60s stand up comedian Lenny Bruce. Directed by renowned choreographer and director, Bob Fosse, this engaging film is an underrated product of the golden era of 70s Hollywood filmmaking, and contains one of Dustin Hoffman's greatest performances. It was nominated for four Academy Awards in it's time - Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor - but lost out on all of them.
Lenny Bruce (Hoffman) started his career as a fairly lame and paint-by-numbers stage comedian who worked in dingy nightclubs and strip-joints (where he would meet his wife, Honey - played by Valerie Perrine). Owing to his growing frustration at both his lack of success and the constrictive, conservative nature of stand-up comedy in the 50s, he began to talk about sex in his stage act. The sensationalist nature of his comedy - whilst landing him in hot water and getting him banned from various nightclubs - soon became a drawcard for audiences. With the rise of 60s radicalism, Lenny soon found himself a cult figure - and he began to use his stage show as a platform for caustic social satire and commentary on the hypocrisies of mainstream America. This soon led to various court appearances for Lenny, and he spent the last years of his life railing at the legal system that tried to have him muzzled for being in breach of obscenity laws.
Bruce comes across as a proto-Bill Hicks... his stand-up is explosive, cutting edge and altogether subvervise and in our more open-minded times (and, indeed, in the film 'revolution' of 70s Hollywood) his story as a crusader for free speech is nothing short of tragic. Fosse uses striking black and white cinematography to give a film a gritty, sleazy and lively documentary look, and cuts back and forth between Bruce's later days of on-stage frustration and his early rise through the clubs, highlighting the story's immediacy and relevance.
As I mentioned before, this is one of Hoffman's best performances... back when the actor was edgy and dedicated to his craft to the point of obsession, and not the joke he has kind of become today. Here he brilliantly recreates Bruce's energetic, heartfelt train-of-thought stage-spiels... managing to get across the comedian's sincerity and not falling into the trap of ranting and raving. Hoffman's performance is particularly poignant in the film's last few scenes, where Bruce's drug addictions begin to overwhelm him after the system brings him down.
This is a tragic and important story about the road to free speech, unfortunately still relevant in our heightened post-9/11 version of 'democracy'. Bruce's comedy was fresh, funny and informative... but the bureaucracy and hypocrisy of 'the system' wore him down to the point of collapse. As with all biopics, you can never be sure if the truth is being fully represented unless you're already intimately familiar with the subject - as it stands, to someone new to Lenny Bruce like me, the film seems to be very balanced and I'm inclined to think it's message is 100% on the level. It's an unfair story, Bruce never really hurt anyone and he didn't deserve to be treated the way he was by the legal system. Good movie.
| 81 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
They have just released a live Lenny Bruce DVD this month in Oz, I havent grabbed it yet, but I will put a review up when I see it.
Comment by Luke
Old Movies
Cane Toad Warrior
And yeah I've been keen to see Straight Time ever since I finished reading Mr. Blue by Eddie Bunker.