Beyond the Sea

Bobby Darin was a great singer and entertainer. And his untimely death at age 37 was most unfortunate. But, aside from one interesting revelation about his parents, I'm not sure that his life was any more deserving of a film than dozens of other singers and entertainers from the fifties and sixties. The fact that "Beyond The Sea" is mostly a musical tribute rather than a traditional biography suggests a lack of substantive material on which to base a two hour movie.

The film's complex structure is unusual, in that the adult Darin (Kevin Spacey) talks with himself as a child (William Ullrich) and the two of them, via flashbacks and fantasy, direct a movie about the adult's life. It is an interesting, though at times confusing, structural approach.

What I liked most about the film is the music. Spacey himself sings the songs. And he does a terrific job with the big band sounds of "Dream Lover", "Artificial Flowers", "Some Of These Days", "Beyond The Sea" and, of course, "Mack The Knife". The film's secondary performances are quite good, especially John Goodman. Production design is high quality, and the dance routines are well staged.

Overall, listening to Darin's songs was great. But I would have preferred a more traditional, linear biography. This movie reinforces the perception that talented performers who die young are more likely to get film tributes than talented performers who live to an old age. Maybe, in some way, Hollywood feels guilty at the premature loss. Or, maybe, an early death makes the entertainer, over time, seem more idealized.

This has been called "a labor of love" by the man responsible for this movie: Kevin Spacey. He was driving force behind this biography being put on screen, even to the point of starring in the title role. This is the most amazing aspect of them all: Spacey's imitation of singer Bobby Darin. It's unbelievable! He sounds remarkably close to how Darin sounded. He did his idol proud, that's for sure.

Those who complain that he was told old to play the part are nitpicking. I am not a personal fan of Spacey. Off-screen, I think he's a jerk. However, the criticism of him here is simply unfair. The man did an incredible job imitating Darin - period. Who could have done better?

Kate Bosworth is also very good as "Sandra Dee," the actress who married Darin. She comes across as a very positive and nice person, a lot more than Darin whose problems are shown as well as his good points. He is not always a good guy.

The language is a little rougher than I'd like to see this in this music-biography. The bits with the kid were annoying, not profound as they were obviously trying to be. In fact, the film would have ended perfectly without that last 4-5 minute scene with the child.

I've been a fan of Walden Robert Cassotto's for a long, long time, and I've been following the progress (or non-progress) of the bio-pic based on his life for an equally long time (couldn't have been any more pleased when I learned that Kevin Spacey was going to be the one to finally bring the project to the proverbial light of day). I'm mentioning this because I realize it's impossible for me to be completely objective about the movie, feeling about its subject as strongly as I do; I think that anyone who loved Bobby Darin cannot be thoroughly objective regarding Spacey's film.

That having been said, I can tell you that I was profoundly affected by Beyond The Sea. Spacey lives up to his surname in spades with this project, by tossing out all the 'normal' bio-pic story-telling tools, instead resorting to a spaced-out show biz fantasy-type structure which does work because Bobby himself did use his career as an antidote against the reality of his ever-failing health and inevitable early death - his overwhelming drive and beyond-intense focus stemmed from the fact that he knew he had only so much time to do anything with his life; this is what made him so great on stage, and this immediacy and strength of purpose is conveyed brilliantly in the movie not through the usual talking and explaining sequences but rather through Darin's actions. So the liberties that Spacey takes with Bobby's life pay off - the song-and-dance numbers and the plot devices (the best one being Darin's younger self having a simultaneous part in the proceedings with the older Darin).

So much has been written about Spacey being too old to play Bobby, how Spacey shouldn't have actually sung the songs himself, how this is a vanity project on Spacey's part, blah blah blah. All untrue.

The clever way in which he stages the film acknowledges the fact that he knows he's chronologically older than the perfect age to play this part, and he sings the songs himself because he CAN - his voice is more than serviceable; in fact when I saw the trailer for the first time a few months back and heard him singing Mack The Knife I was in the theatre telling the person I'd come with "That's Bobby, that can't possibly be Kevin Spacey" - this from a person who has listened to Darin's recording of that song literally hundreds and hundreds of times.

The thing that is most interesting about the negative criticism is the one about this being a vanity project for Spacey; his desire and enthusiasm to share his feeling for Darin via this project is being interpreted as an ego trip, when in reality it's an unabashed and pure labor of love. The film is being misunderstood by a lot of people, and I see this as being unbelievably ironic and, ultimately, proof that the film works because Darin himself was constantly misunderstood, constantly having his hell-bent-for-leather, no-time-to-waste desperation perceived as arrogance. So Spacey succeeded on that level alone.

It also doesn't hurt that from the back, he manages to bear an uncanny resemblance to Bobby, he captures the physicality perfectly, and in all the shots that are not too close up, you'd swear it was Bobby that you were seeing and not Spacey. It's only in the close-ups that I was reminded it wasn't actually Bobby on the screen, and in the later scenes, when he becomes politically aware, grows the mustache and bills himself as Bob Darin, Spacey looks like him even in the close-ups.

By the end of the film, I found myself feeling profoundly moved by what I was experiencing, even though, oddly enough, I didn't feel up to that point that the film was particularly profound, and so my reaction was very surprising to me. There's a scene where -=- POSSIBLE SPOILER -=- Darin is in his hospital bed right before he dies and Sandra Dee (who was no longer with him at that time but still loved him) is in the bed cuddled up beside him - that image was, to me, by far the single most powerful one in the movie, and it has stayed with me, long after the movie's final credits. -=-END OF POSSIBLE SPOILER

I want to include this: the person I saw the film with hadn't been a fan of Bobby's the way I had for years, and I asked her after we'd left the theatre if she'd felt moved by what she'd experienced - I was trying to get a more objective idea how the movie would play to someone who wasn't so emotionally connected to the material. She said that after seeing it, she wanted to know more about Bobby, how she'd had no idea what he'd gone through in his life and how she felt tremendous compassion and respect for him.

Spacey has said that his motivation in doing the movie was to remind people who hardly remembered him what a monumental talent Bobby Darin was, and to hopefully introduce a new generation to the man. I think he's succeeded on that level too, at least with people who go to see this movie with an open mind and a receptive heart.

If you can overcome what I can't, you will enjoy Beyond the Sea: Kevin Spacey is too old to play Bobby Darin, the 50's pop singer who died from long-term effects of rheumatic heart at 37. At times Spacey is playing Darin in his twenties when no matter how you tighten and pin Spacey's face, he is still a 44-year old man with all the lovely creases and bags time awards. The dislocation bothered me so that I couldn't fully appreciate what is otherwise an outstanding performance.

But then Spacey is the director, so he has to be responsible for miscasting (or put another way, why didn't he do this 10 years ago when no one on this planet could have denied that he is the perfect Darin?). As John Irving said in "My Movie Business" about the choice of actors, "Looks do count." Although others have criticized Beyond the Sea as a Spacey vanity project, I found his performance believable and engaging with style appropriate to the best lounge singers of the time (Sinatra included) and spot-on perfect for Darin, if not better than the original. I've heard Spacey is touring with his band to promote this biopic; I'd go just to enjoy Spacey as a gifted singer.

The only moments to get past the many Darin songs and into his life are those centering on the influence of his "mother" (Brenda Blethyn, "Secrets and Lies") and his marriage to Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth). In the former, Blethyn does a bit of singing and dancing to show that Spacey is not the only multi-talent on the set. In the latter, the pop- culture lite of their romance is handled believably, as one might try to do David Beckham and his spicey love, a marriage just a vacuous and emblematic as the Darins'.

The irony of Sandra's mother wanting her to go after Rock Hudson rather than Darin brings laughter, intended for sure, as the audience is aware of Spacey's contending with rumors about being gay. Even jokes about Darin's toupee resonate with Spacey's own rugs in real life and for this part. Spacey doesn't take himself as seriously as critics do (witness an early scene where in the framing device of Darin filming his own life, he is accused of being too old to play himself).

The conjunction of subject and biographer is challenging at best. Paul Murray Kendall in "The Art of Biography" says, "On the trail of another man, the biographer must put up with finding himself at every turn: any biography uneasily shelters an autobiography within it." In that sense, Beyond the Sea is as much about Kevin Spacey as it is Bonny Darin.

This biopic ranks third next to Ray and De-Lovely; in another less-full year, it would be the best.

I was born over a decade after Bobby Darin died, so I know about him only through songs. Now that I've watched "Beyond the Sea", I feel almost like I know him personally. Kevin Spacey, who also directs, plays the famous singer whose real name was Walden Robert Cassotto. Showing Darin's career, his struggles with rheumatic fever, and his tempestuous marriage to Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth), the movie is like any biopic, but certainly worth seeing. It was really something seeing Darin doing folk music after having been a teen idol. Either way, Bobby Darin was quite a guy. I'm going to have to get my hands on a CD compilation of his songs.