When I do a Friday’s Finest movie segment, I put the name of the director alongside the title, but in the case of Judy (2019), Renée Zellweger certainly deserves her name shone in bright lights, because by golly does she knock this out of the ballpark. I liked watching her ever since her spectacularly tender performance in Jerry Maguire, where she even gives a rivetingly expressive Tom Cruise a run for his money. I still lament that Cruise didn’t get the gong for that, but I won’t get sidetracked.
Zellweger’s chameleon-like delivery of Judy Garland in the biographical film Judy is nothing short of stunning and hyper-real in her portrayal of the 20th-century Hollywood screen legend. It’s so brilliant, in fact, that it subjugates everything that is not her in the film as ordinary by comparison.
In fact, that is what’s ironically seen as a ‘negative’ of the film: that Zellweger’s too good and everything else is not in her league. But, hey… this is a bit crazy, isn’t it, since this is exactly what made Garland the larger-than-life figure on and off screen? The film was solidly received, with a strong rating of over 80% from both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, although IMDb have criticised its slow pacing, writing and underdeveloped story. It currently sits at a modest 6.8 on IMDb.
Wikipedia loose storyline:
The film follows Garland’s career during the last year of her life, when she relocated her stage career to England, coupled with flashbacks of her childhood, most prominently the shooting of her part as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), her most famous film role.
As I was immersing myself in the film on the occasions it appeared here on cable in Colombia, at the same time the wonderful documentary Sid and Judy was also making appearances. And I found each time channel-hopping to find them, I’d immediately find myself watching the whole dang thing. It was great, since I got to appreciate over and over again a period of Hollywood history and music which I was, in large part, unfamiliar with, but was engrossed by.
I’d say to myself, this is music I’ve largely steered away from most of my life – cabaret, big band, 1950s American Songbook stuff – but Garland’s immense and magnetic performances completely won me over. My litmus test for great art has always been when I see an artist do something and I’m left gobsmacked, wondering how the hell they did it.
The Wizard of Oz was re-released here a year or so ago, and being the first film to famously make the transition from sepia to colour, I mean, who can forget the moment Dorothy opens the door of her tornado-swept home after it arrives in Munchkinland and the world of Oz suddenly bursts into Technicolor? Anyways, my daughter and I went to the first viewing near here at 10:30am on a Saturday.
I imagined other cinéfilo fathers / mothers (the whole troop) whisking their kids off to see it, since it was such a culturally significant event in cinema history. Yet, lo and behold, it was just Katherine and I and two adolescents behind us who embarked on the Oz trip-fest, with the rest of the cinema dormant. If it were not for the ghosts of cinema past sitting there with us, it might have felt like we had the place to ourselves.
References:
1. Judy – IMDB
2. Judy (film) – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
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