Behind the Candelabra

Stephen Soderbergh’s putative swan song, Behind the Candelabra, is like an Old Testament prophet’s rage against the vanity, corruption and futility of his smug, affluent society. As he’s dying of AIDS, Liberace (Michael Douglas) seems like a memento mori. Shrunk to a skull, his head seems too small for his body, as if fleeing it. As Soderbergh retells the memoir of Liberace’s young lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) his recurring theme is the human failure behind the star’s sparkling success. 

That’s the point of the title. Liberace’s signature candelabra denotes wealth, brilliance, flash, glamour, romance. The film exposes the darkness that pretense can’t dispel. Liberace is an artist who no longer plays for pleasure but for professional performance. He is cashing in on his undoubtable -- but trivialized -- skills. What emotions he pretends to are similarly turned into routines, like the loneliness and pathos by which he seduces his continuing diet of young studs. This indulgence proves fatal. 

Even his gushing love for his mother (Debbie Reynolds) proves false when her death leaves him feeling “free.” When Soderbergh doesn’t show Scott’s visit to his foster mother’s funeral he leaves open the degree to which even his most private emotions have been contaminated by his generous patron. That generosity is exposed to be a selfish form of dominance, an oblique way for the open-handed, closed-hearted giver to really take instead. This is especially true when Liberace forces Scott to undergo plastic surgery to make him look like the “son” he promises to legally make him. The supposed gift of adoption continues the enslavement Liberace felt from his mother.

Of course Liberace’s candelabra is intended to show him off to his advantage. His life is a matter of performance, not feeling, of fakery. His entourage bristles with barely concealed animosities and suspicions. The onstage performance spreads into his private life, with the keyboard replaced by the key players in his private life.

The harshest scenes in this exposure are the plastic surgery the stoned Dr Jack Startz (Rob Lowe) performs on Liberace, to smooth over his aging, and on Scott, to smooth over his difference from Liberace. The gruesome slicing and blood are from another world than Liberace’s glitter, the most dramatic reminder of the grim reality behind the candelabra. (Incidentally, these scenes recall the brilliant horror in Michael Rubbo’s unforgettable documentary, Portrait of Daisy, a film well worth hunting down).

For an Old Testament prophet’s fervid sermon the film offers some revelatory pleasures.  Both lead performances are brilliant, as are the supports by Reynolds, Lowe, Paul Reiser, Dan Aykroyd. The candid treatment of the characters‘ homosexuality is a welcome reminder of the healthy shift in the culture’s understanding of it. The central gay lovers are played by two certified Hollywood hetero studs. Reiser also plays his lawyer against his (comic) persona, Lowe his stoner hedonist in extension of his own. These are genuine performances that bring life to a fiction, in contrast to this Liberace's selfish theatricalization of his life and emotions.