Butley

The Long Gay's Journey into Night. Nothing but bileous dialogue. Unwitty, uninteresting and unbearable.

This is one of the most excruciating films I have ever seen.

I can't believe the good reviews. They must have bought the pretense.

The late Alan Bates had many "bests" (if one may be permitted to say so)because of the constant intensity he brought to every role. He made acting something of a physical sport. In this case, his neurotic Butley uses language as a fencer's epee, yielding nothing to putative antagonists in the tight confines of an English department office in a major university as the camera follows him doggedly thrusting and parrying without pause. I especially liked the puns and double entendres (obviously). This sort of thing is not for everyone, of course, and I do not blame the viewer who is easily bored by such verbal jousting.

Did I mention the superb camera work? It is a tour de force to take a stage play like this one and make it come alive on film. Great acting and great direction would be lost without due attention to the medium, and this one has it par excellence. As depressing as the theme may be, and as unlikeable the fictional characters, this production succeeds in demonstrating just how powerful a film can be in spite of itself. It reminded me instantly of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in that regard. And it is uncanny in its recognition of all the unhappy details found in any college English department office.

The nicest touch, of course, was in making Butley a T. S. Eliot specialist, with a photo of the lugubrious poet pinned to the wall. Much comic relief if one knows how to spot it.

"Butley" is a film version of the play by the same name that also starred Alan Bates. This is fortunate, as so often when plays are brought to film, the producers completely recast the actors. And, I must say Bates did an amazing job in the lead.

That being said, although Alan Bates did a great job playing a very caustic man, the film itself if probably NOT something most folks will enjoy. He plays a cynical, lazy, nasty alcoholic....the type person you really WOULDN'T want to spend much time with nor build a film around them. In other words, Bates did a great job playing someone you'll strongly dislike...or worse. There really is NOTHING to like about Butley...nothing. And that is why this is an unusual film...very well made but thoroughly unenjoyable after a while.

This American Film Theater presentation of Simon Gray's play about a bisexual professor of English whose life is in full collapse is a wordy affair. Alan Bates, in the title role, talks almost nonstop.... or perhaps I should say that he speaks. Harold Pinter directed this production like a stage play, and the performances are theatrical.

I found it impossible to work up any sympathy for Bates' character, who seems to have sabotaged his life through bad choices. Likely that was Gray's point. He taught at Queen Mary College for a quarter of a century, and this looks like an illustration of the irony that the in-fighting in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small. Of course, these are people fighting for their lives, but they don't seem to care much for those lives, just in scoring hateful points off each other. In any case, I found the show as unpleasant as the self-absorbed characters.

One of the primary reasons for seeing this adaptation of 'Butley' is that it is one of the thirteen films making up the American Film Theatre series, which was an interesting and ambitious project but a flawed one. It is hard to go wrong with having a fine actor like Alan Bates, who sounded perfect and did two other films in the series (the others being 'Three Sisters' and 'In Celebration'). The play is good fun and Harold Pinter as director intrigued me, knowing him better for his play and screen writing.

'Butley' more than does the source material justice, managing to be faithful in detail and spirit to it without being too much so. It is easily one of the top 3 best films in the American Film Theatre series along with 'The Iceman Cometh' and 'The Homecoming' (the latter of which being written by Pinter and one of his finest plays) and by quite some way the best since 'The Homecoming'. It is highly recommended and has more to it than just curiosity value.

Pinter's direction is a little too laconic on occasion, which meant that the energy wasn't always consistent (this was fleetingly though).

A vast majority of it though is absolutely fine, very intelligent, precise and not losing the play's necessary exuberance. The script is talk-heavy, as is expected from a play, but it doesn't feel wordy. Instead it felt sharp, smart and amusing in a dark but never distasteful way.

It's a well shot and produced film, with not near as much of a too filmed play feel that most films in the American Film Theatre series suffer from. The energy is near constant. Once again the characters are deeply flawed but not one's definition of likeable (not a problem for me but this has been a criticism that has popped up in reviews for most of the series' films), but they are meaty and feel real.

While Jessica Tandy and Simon O'Callaghan are both excellent, the best thing about 'Butley' is the intense and exuberant tour de force performance from Bates.

Concluding, great and one of the series' best. 9/10.