When this on came out, there was some amount of talk about it, everyone had to say that this was a mediocre movie. That is the very best of what I can say for it. Not that "The Libertine" is the worst movie I've seen, it is just not at all good. Furthermore, what gets me like with other movies I say bad things about, it could have been better or at least it gave the pretense that it was a better movie.
At its immediate opening "The Libertine" seems like a perfect sort of costume-drama as well as an interesting portrait of an interesting person. A film lover can enjoy for the first several minutes a decent amount of cinematic beauty, and a portrayal of several interesting figures. However, before long this stops being so great. After entering "The Libertine", a muck dominates the screen and basic frame of the movie.
Muck, a color in about every shot of the picture. Sometimes this can be used well to bring out a time, a feeling, or a place. Directors have used this forever, something tells me that it is not that hard to do, but really hard to do just right. Recently HBO's "John Adams" used muck very effectively, but only occasionally. When every shot of a movie is dominated by the same colors each time, I only find myself loving the fact that I did not see this on in the theater where this would have been too much. It is very clear what the director seeks to do, bringing out the tones from period pieces of art such as the work of Vermeer. I have seen Vermeer done well and it does not look like "The Libertine". How long can one look into the same muddy puddle? Well not 114 minutes which is more than enough running time for this mucky movie.
However, I am not going to say that that was the worst part of the movie. What did pain my eyes more than anything else in the movie was Samantha Morton's performance. I did not see "Mister Lonely" it looked okay, but it was her performance in the trailer that really turned me away. She looked painfully familiar when I first saw her in this, now I have more reason to not see other movies featuring her this prominently. Never has a performance been more dry and uninterestingly delivered as this one.
But I will try not to pin all the blame on her (only most of it), the rest of the performances is smeared among several of my favorite actors; Johnny Depp, Tom Hollander, John Malkovich, and even Jack Davenport. All make the best of what they are given (as I am sure that Ms. Morton did), but none falls harder than Depp who the movie leans on for support without giving its main character enough to hold it up. Where a tour-de-force would be, a struggling cast of top-notch actors is left. In the end, the is simply unfortunate.
However, I feel it necessary not to pin to much to one person or group. Obviously, at some point on the line, a writer has some blame in not being able to create enough for this movie. The best lines of the script seem to be prose from the Earl of Rochester's own works, something greater, although apparently not much greater, than this movie. Perhaps not the whole movie but certainly the last two acts.
At first, or rather, the first act of "The Libertine" seems good all things considered. There is good and lively character exposition, while not forgetting to point out what sort of disgusting people the movie revolves around. All this is generally very good, it could even be relished in a movie. But when the second act stumbles in, all there is is an amount of filth with nothing to balance it out, the movie looses sight of any kind of solid matter for the opportunity to show off its already evident themes. Any audience knows what the movie is about by the time "The Libertine" takes the opportunity to throw it in your face again and again. Finally, the brief third act steps in, with nothing more good to bring to the screen. The third act comes through in two of its own wakes, the first really really bad, the second only really bad. The audience suffers through the disgusting end of John Wilmot's life just wishing he had died sooner (which is a terrible thing to say, especially for Johnny Depp's role). Finally when he does die, an ending must be slapped on so that the filmmakers can feel like it actually was meaningful. Since deep down they knew it wasn't at all meaning full, they put another one in slightly earlier.
Unfortunately, I have nothing much good to say for this movie. I wish that it was mediocre. If it was, it would have been better than this. I did not like it, which, as John Wilmot made clear at the beginning, was exactly what he wanted. Damn him.