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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1987)
Prick Up Your Ears The highest praise must go to Gary Oldman; as Joe Orton he exudes warmth and unrepentant sexuality. B Y B R A D Y And can we ever understand what would cause a man to brutally murder his lover and kill himself.’ These are the questions Prick Up Your Ears invite us to ask. I suspect we will be reflecting on the answers for a long time. DRAGONFLY GARDENS J E N S E N partners during this time. The film actually has two narrative Director: Stephen Frears threads. The first is the story of Joe Orton. Starring: Gary Oldman, Alfred The second, that of John Lahr and his Molina, Vanessa Redgrave research into Orton’s life. The film weaves Playing at: The Movie House from one thread to the other, using the If you read his diary all will be explained. present-day story to amplify, analyze, and K.H. interpret the past. It is a very effective P.S. Especially the latter part ” technique, vaguely reminiscent of The French Lieutenant's Woman. Screenwriter ith these words, and nine cracks with a hammer, Kenneth Halliwell Alan Bennet captures Joe Orton — his anger and rage with society and his burn made himself equal to his lover, ing humor which was his revenge. Bennett British playwright Joe Orton. On August 9, 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned his lover of draws heavily on Orton’s diary, written over the last two years of his life, and the sixteen years and took his own life with dialogue always rings true. The wholly sleeping pills. Orton was 34 and, after just fictionalized is kept to a minimum, and even where necessary, as in Halli well's and Orton’s final scene. Bennett is true to Orton’s spirit. Stephen Frears, director of My Beautiful two full-length plays, his outrageous and Laundrette, does a masterful job with tone irreverent humor had conquered London and atmospheie. The period details cap theater. Lost, as his lover achieved the ture the sense of claustrophobic confine fame he had always sought, Halliwell be ment in Orton’s and Halliwell’s room and came a bitter, depressed and lonely man the dark squalid world of anonymous sex. paralyzed with the fear that Orton would Frears balances this in neat counterpoint leave him. with the scenes in present day, which are Prick Up Your Ears, based on the nearly always shot in well-lit, open rooms. biography of Orton by John Lahr, is the Visually, the film stresses the outlaw in story of Orton and Halliwell, their life Orton that popular and critical success together and their tragic deaths. Like any could not erase. film biography, it walks a thin line Prick Up Your Ears succeeds principal between faithfully portraying a life and ly, however, on the strength of its three sensitively depicting a dramatic story. It main characters — Gary Oldman as Orton, succeeds wonderfully at both. At another Alfred Molina as Halliwell, and Vanessa level, it is a giant step forward in the depic Redgrave as Orton’s powerful theatrical tion of homosexuality through film. Orton agent, Peggy Ramsay, Wallace Shawn, of and Halliwell were lovers for sixteen My Dinner With Andre as Lahr, and Julie years, coupled at a time when homosexu Walters (Educating Rita) as Orton’s ality was still illegal in Britain and mostly mother, Elise, lend firm support to the carried out in public bathrooms (“ Tea principals. Rooms” ) and abandoned buildings. Prick The highest praise must go to Oldman, Up Your Ears does not disguise this rela whose only other film credit is as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy. Oldman exudes tionship, nor make apologies for it. There warmth and unrepentant sexuality. Even in is no implication that the fact Orton and Halliwell were gay is in any way respon - photographs, Orton is magnetic — plain sexy. Critics of Orton’s work believe the sible for the grisly outcome. rage explicit in his work was the focused At its heart. Prick Up Your Ears is an examination of a relationship put under the product of the rage he felt towards a soci ety which harshly oppressed any overt sex stress of success, more accurately, the uality, and homosexuality in particular. It popular and artistic success of one of the is impossible, therefore, to separate Or partners. In this sense, it almost seems like ton’s sexuality from his work. Oldman one of those old Ladies’ Home Journal captures this rage and the pleasure of sex pieces, “ Can this marriage be saved?” It well — better than could be described in is an all-too-read story of one partner’s words. having “ made it” and leaving the other Prick Up Your Ears is a must-see film. behind. It is not too different from the wife Already it has become a major event. The who puts her husband through medical movie was released simultaneously with school only to be deserted because her the publishing of The Orton Diaries in interests are no longer his. The Orton- England and the United States. A lengthy Halliwell relationship was founded on excerpt appears in the May Vanity Fair. failure; as long as they were both failures - Loot, Orton’s award-winning second play, on stage or in writing — they were equals. Success of the one drove home all the more was revived successfully on Broadway last year, and Joseph Papp just optioned the strongly the failure of the other. Beatles movie screenplay, which was un There is another sub-text to Prick Up finished at Orton’s death, for a new Your Ears, one unique to the gay experi musical. ence. Orton and Halliwell were complete Twenty years after his death, interest in outcasts. They had no gay ghetto to pro Orton has never been more keen. Ironi vide support, no friends or peers. Prick Up cally, despite Halliwell’s reference to the Your Ears is, then, an examination of the gay relationship. Notwithstanding its brutal diaries, Orton’s death remains very much a tragic mystery. Prick Up Your Ears pro ending (due more to the issue of success vides much in the way of explanation, but than sexuality), this relationship worked for a very long time. There is no record of in the end, how much can ever be known the first ten years, but it is clear in the film about the life of two men who live and work for fifteen years in a single room? that this relationship met needs of both A GREAT N EW G A RD EN CEN TER A N D N U R SER Y OFFERING QUALITY AND SERVICE W .¿¿»te*“*— I FEATURING CUT FLOWERS, ORCHIDS AND BONSAI INDOOR AND OUTDOOR PLANTS, TOOLS AND ORGANIC SUPPLIES • QUEERSVILLE SUNDAY 10:00 PM STOCKING A COMPLETE LINE OF ANNUALS, PERENNIALS AND VFGETABLE PLANTS. • WOMANSOUL FRIDAY 10:00 PM COME IN AND SEE OUR COLLECTION OF COLORFUL CONTAINERS 2230 S.E. HAWTHORNE BLVD. 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