Word: orton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This decision makes Orton the man, not Orton the event, the focus of the film. We get an idea of the outrageous sexual farce Orton concocted for the Beatles in his never-made Up Against It, but Prick Up Your Ears is far more concerned with the irreverent way Orton dealt with McCartney and Co. than with what he wanted...
...Your Ears is the story of two intriguing men and their problematic relations. The brilliant performances by Gary Oldman as the randy playwright and Alfred Molina as the whining Halliwell necessarily make the film, because Bennett and Frears have all but ignored the charged times in which the Orton story unfolded. Although painstaking detail masterfully recreates the setting of the story, the filmmakers have largely eschewed an attempt to depict the explosive social scene of 1960s London...
Fashioning himself a latter-day Oscar Wilde, Orton's artistic goal is nattily summed up in the picture's title. Taken from an uncompleted Orton script, it states exactly what Orton wanted to give his audience in plays such as Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot and What the Butler Saw. Through shock, Orton sought to shake up British society. We are given a hint of the stuffy British upbringing Orton received, but too little a taste of Orton's literary product. A snatch of dialogue here or there doesn't convey the playwright's reputed genius. We have to take...
Prick Up Your Ears is as much the story of Halliwell's failure as it is Orton's success. An older, better educated man who picks up the boisterous Orton at a class in London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he infuses the youth with his literary pretentions and dreams of being a novelist. That it is Orton who actually lives out those dreams drives Halliwell mad; Molina gives a surprisingly sympathetic rendering of the murderer, portraying Halliwell's vascillation between pride in his young charge's accomplishments and jealousy of his fame...
Ironically, the most unflattering portrayal in the picture is not of murderer Halliwell or the perverse Orton, but of Lahr himself. Played annoyingly by Wallace Shawn, Lahr comes across as a block-headed buffoon with hardly a grasp of the events he is retelling. His interviews with Peggy Ramsay (Vanessa Redgrave), Orton's literary agent, point out the distance between artist and audience; it's as if Ramsay, representing Orton, is leading Lahr around on a string...