CHAPLIN, a heartfelt, beautifully appointed, well-cast attempt to condense the life—lives—of quintessential comic artist Charlie Chaplin into a feature length biodrama, mirrored its subject in that it succeeded & failed, won & lost, with ambition & talent circumscribed by choices & circumstances in & of the medium that made ‘The Little Tramp’ a king .
“That’s not what dogged me, George. It wasn’t that. It was…it was the knowledge that if you did what I did for a living-if you were a clown-and you had a passion to tell a particular kind of story…something…beyond…but you only had the one chance to get it right. And I never did. One never does, but, uh, you know that. That’s not…the problem. It’s when you feel you’re getting really close…but you can’t make it the rest of the way. You’re not good enough. You’re not complete enough. And despite all your fantasies you’re second rate.”
Like his touchstone epic Gandhi, this was a passion project for director-producer Richard Attenborough, martialing a first-rate cast and crew into episodic formation to deal out the script by William Boyd and William Goldman. Fastidious as a producer, both ebullient and reserved as a director, ‘Dickie’ originally saw the project as a mini-series (ideal given the breadth of Chaplin’s life), and then vainly hoped for a four-hour feature (trimmed down from 200 hours worth of filmed material) but was forced by studio dynamics (and market practicality) to whittle that down to an audience-acceptable running time of 143 minutes.
After lukewarm reviews (sniffy critics rarely liked Attenborough’s style, and his earnest decency no doubt rankled their collective sour grapes mentality) and what amounted to box-office catastrophe, he expressed regret that it wasn’t what he’d hoped: “I wish I could make it again. And do it right.” While its framing provides just a triptych version of its subject, it’s nonetheless interesting and entertaining, occasionally quite moving, with many flavorful scenes and colorful real-life characters, dominated by the crucial ingredient everyone agreed was superlative, Robert Downey Jr.’s uncanny, transformative performance. The whipsmart but high-wired 26-year old ‘bad boy’ (he raced a rocky road to Iron Man) scooped an Oscar nomination. He should have won, but Al Pacino’s showboating in Scent Of A Woman shooed in a long-delayed token win after 20 years and seven nominations. The fine art direction from Stuart Craig (all the Harry Potter flix) and John Barry’s sensitive scoring were also up for Oscars.
Spanning 1894 to 1972, the script—based off Chaplin’s 1964 autobiography and David Robinson’s 1985 “Chaplin: His Life and Art”—takes its complex hero from age five in the London slums to eighty-three and his return to America and Hollywood to accept an honorary Academy Award. In the bulging in-between are his apprenticeship in Britain’s rowdy burlesque venues, his mother’s commitment to an asylum (daughter Geraldine Chaplin—her finest hour—plays her grandmother Hannah), meteoric success in American silent films, life in the States and early Hollywood, four marriages and banishment from the US during McCarthyism (thanks to J. Edgar Hoover’s vindictiveness), all framed by old-age interviews at his ex-pat home in Switzerland. Anthony Hopkins has the fictitious role of the interviewer. Among the array of supporting players, Kevin Kline aces the best shot as devil-may-care pal Douglas Fairbanks, and plays him to a hilt.
It was chancy to start with that a modern audience in sufficient numbers would care about a silent movie idol, and the unsentimental box office bore that out. In the States, receipts only took it to 97th in ’92 ($9,493,000). Some $2,700,000 came in from the U.K. Measured against a production cost of $31,000,000 this was a cruel blow.
“Syd, I love this country. I owe it everything. That’s why I can make fun of it!”
With Paul Rhys (older brother Sydney), Moira Kelly (dual roles: first love Hetty Kelly and last wife Oona O’Neill), Diane Lane (smart & sexy Paulette Goddard, spouse #3), Kevin Dunn (as lawman/bully/freak J. Edgar Hoover), Dan Aykroyd (a sore thumb in the cast, as Mack Sennett), Maria Pitillo (as Mary Pickford), Penelope Ann Miller (silent days team-mate Edna Purviance), James Woods (in vicious mode as a lawyer), Marisa Tomei (as silent star Mabel Normand), Milla Jovovich (1st wife, gold-digger Mildred Harris), Nancy Travis (nutjob scammer Joan Barry), John Thaw, Deborah Moore (2nd wife Lita Grey), Thomas Bradford (Charlie at 14), Gerald Sim, Robert Stephens, David Duchovny.
Movies ala Mark 
A very good film but I think it would have been better had Richard made it as a miniseries instead. So much skipped over or only briefly focused upon.
Brilliant performances and a gorgeous score.
Absolutely, Maddy. I was taken aback about how quickly they went through the women in his life. When they got to Oona, I was disappointed because it meant that the film would soon be ending. There were so many layers to unravel. With Anthony Hopkins as our guide, I believe that a mini-series format would have brought much more satisfaction. Nonetheless, CHAPLIN was a tremendous effort that was a long overdue tribute to Charles.
I’m going to wait until I watch this before reading your review. I’ve been wanting to watch it for ages and finally ARTE has it on Replay. 🙂
The only drawback for me that I can see is that I have never been a huge Robert Downey, Jr. fan but I’m willing to look past this for the sake of the subject matter at hand.
I got to watch it tonight and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the film. It was clearly made with great detail to attention and quality; two notable characteristics of any Richard Attenborough film. Some of the casting was a bit perplexing but I admired how everyone seemed to go head-on into character.
Considering the time constraints that were forced upon him, I’d say that Sir Richard outdid himself. Much in the league of his contemporary, and once director, David Lean, his style was too brilliant for the masses. They surely don’t make them like that anymore.