Behind The Candelabra is a biographic drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh. The plot covers the last years of Liberace’s (Michael Douglas) life and his highly troublesome romance with Scott Thorson (Matt Damon).
So, my takeaway from this film was ‘damn wasn’t Liberace a bad guy’.
As far as biopics go this was incredibly well done, it was very engaging, and the train wreck worth of drama made it very hard to look away even for a second. I applaud it forgiving us a look at Liberace the person in a very enclosed time period rather than just giving a brief overview of his career. I also applaud it for showing the good and the bad, something modern biopics have struggled to do, thought I probably does help that the subject is dead and that his friends didn’t have huge involvement with the project.
Douglas and Damon both gave terrific performances and drifted into their characters; they were entirely convincing.
My one issue with this film is that it has a tendency to verge on melodrama. There are multiple scenes in this film that would not be amiss in a reality tv show, and yes, I understand that Liberace was a very larger than life type of figure, but it became a bit much at times.
Overall, this was captivating and held my attention well for the almost two hours’ worth of runtime.
Pros.
Showing the good and the bad
A shorter focus
Great performances and cameos
Hard to look away
Cons.
A bit too much like reality tv at times
4/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 