Judy

Hol­ly­wood isn’t a real place. It’s a mirage. A land of make- believe that exists beyond the clouds. Movies are friv­o­lous enter­tain­ments, but they’re also bill­board adver­tise­ments for an Oz-like Arca­dia of sat­u­rat­ed Tech­ni­col­or hues and cloy­ing big band melodies. We’re sold the impres­sion of Hol­ly­wood as a nir­vana, and if you’re able to break inside, then all your pos­i­tive (or saleable) human traits will be asset-stripped then ampli­fied across the land, and pos­si­bly beyond. Yet sup­ping from the poi­son chal­ice of star­dom – or hav­ing it foist­ed upon you by an over­bear­ing par­ent – can come at a dead­ly cost.

Judy Gar­land found this out the hard way. As the biogra­phies have it, she became the star attrac­tion of her family’s trav­el­ling vaude­ville revue by acci­dent. At the end of a set she would tod­dle onto the stage and belt out a tune that would instant­ly rel­e­gate her old­er sib­lings to the sta­tus of rank ama­teur. Her moth­er became fix­at­ed with the notion that the prodi­gal daugh­ter, then named Frances Gumm, pos­sessed a unique asset that oth­ers want­ed and would pay dear­ly for. This girl was a nat­ur­al born enter­tain­er, in pos­ses­sion of a set of pipes that set her apart from the bray­ing rab­ble. The dream of Hol­ly­wood was there for the tak­ing, and she grabbed it, even if her hand was forced.

Rupert Goold’s heart­break­ing his­tor­i­cal dra­ma (I don’t want to sul­ly it by call­ing it a biopic), Judy, trans­ports the view­er to the oth­er, dark­er side of the rain­bow, to Garland’s woe­be­gone twi­light years as a cash-in-hand cabaret chanteuse dressed in what looks like recon­sti­tut­ed cur­tain ends. Her name is mud with­in the Hol­ly­wood fir­ma­ment, most­ly down to what the gos­sip mags would chalk up as diva-ish ten­den­cies (and more), plus the movie musi­cal – her forte – has gone the way of the wool­ly mammoth.

We meet her at the point when she’s been tossed out of her hotel and skid row beck­ons. It’s strange to be con­front­ed with the real­i­ty that one of the ritzi­est stars of the 20^th cen­tu­ry was, by her mid-for­ties, being put out to pas­ture. What’s even stranger is that Goold and screen­writer Tom Edge are not show­ing us this as a way to land a pin in the time­line then load up the juke­box and whisk us back through the glo­ry years. No, Judy is more of a con­sid­ered, care­ful­ly focused film which hones in on a rel­a­tive­ly low-key, albeit rep­re­sen­ta­tive and dra­mat­i­cal­ly rich seg­ment of Garland’s lat­er career.

The plot cov­ers her ful­fil­ment of a 1968 com­mis­sion to per­form night­ly at London’s Talk of the Town din­ner the­atre, an invite accept­ed as an only alter­na­tive to immi­nent penury. It also means suck­ing up the agony of being sep­a­rat­ed from her two young chil­dren for god knows how long. She sings, she wows, she drinks, she smokes, she stum­bles, she mar­ries, she has a night-cap with a pair of gay fans, and then, the lights go down. The applause fades. Silence.

The open­ing 30 min­utes of the film focus sole­ly on Judy’s messy pri­vate life, her divorce from Sid Luft (Rufus Sewell) and the bind she finds her­self in with regard to need­ing fast cash to be able to retain cus­tody of her kids. Every­thing about her is sham­bol­ic, yet her impuls­es are fuelled by an hon­est desire to love and be loved.

She arrives in Lon­don like a minor roy­al who’s been at the sher­ry, applaud­ed by a pha­lanx of super­fans and head­ing into a sold-out open­ing night. She skips rehearsals because she doesn’t need them. There is no dis­cus­sion to be had. Jessie Buckley’s Ros­alyn Wilder is sad­dled with the task of mak­ing sure she’s on time and sober (enough) to sing. It’s a build-up of dread and dis­cord, which is instant­ly dif­fused by the open­ing bars of ​‘Rain or Shine’, which she deliv­ers as if it was the last song of the last night of the last tour of her life.

Along the way, the occa­sion­al flash­back depicts teenage Judy (Dar­ci Shaw) on the set of The Wiz­ard of Oz, being bul­lied by the cig­ar-chomp­ing MGM stu­dio hon­cho, Louis B May­er. He is a human oak, and his mon­strous­ness is con­cealed under­neath the grim log­ic of his faux-root­sy lec­tures, which are in fact pas­sive-aggres­sive cas­ti­ga­tions deliv­ered in a nev­er-waver­ing bari­tone to a young, impres­sion­able girl who nev­er had a chance. One shot in which he caress­es the cross on Judy’s chest as she drips water fol­low­ing an impromp­tu swim in the stu­dio plunge pool sug­gests deep­er abuse.

In the main role, as adult Judy, is Renée Zell­weger, who exhumes the spir­it of this fall­en idol with ram­shackle ele­gance. There is no two-bit mim­ic­ry here, no over-rehearsed tics or obvi­ous­ly detectible plum­my accent. Both Zell­weger and Goold under­stand that overzeal­ous imi­ta­tion in this type of film only serves to dri­ve a wedge between audi­ence and mate­r­i­al. The ten-a-pen­ny pea­cock turns by up-for-it chancers doing their best filmed karaōke so often drains a movie of nuance and cred­i­bil­i­ty, as all the focus is placed on, what is, a pageant of paid-for narcissism.

Here, Zell­weger slinks into the sto­ry. She allows her­self to be enveloped by elab­o­rate and dif­fuse emo­tions. She under­stands that gar­ish show­boat­ing is not nec­es­sary to make this intense­ly sad film meet its true poten­tial. It’s a tow­er­ing, shat­ter­ing, hot-cold-hot per­for­mance from an actor in total con­trol of body and mind. She is com­plete­ly com­fort­able inside the skin of an icon. If there is a down­side, it is that she does show up the sup­port­ing cast, who are right to cow­er in her wake. There are hints of Glo­ria Swanson’s fall­en grande dame, Nor­ma Desmond, from Bil­ly Wilder’s Sun­set Blvd., albeit with none of the enti­tled mania and all of that sense of a lumi­nary lost in time.

Anoth­er aspect of this extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance is how Zell­weger wres­tles with Garland’s life up to this point, but nev­er suc­cumbs to sign­post­ing the trag­ic fate that awaits her the fol­low­ing year, in 1969. A TV inter­view sees Gar­land bom­bard­ed with intru­sive ques­tions about her past, and Zell­weger teas­es the bare­ly-sup­pressed anger with­out ever show­ing it. She makes light of Mayer’s malev­o­lence and the effect it had on her with dis­arm­ing louch­eness, pre­sent­ing her pro­fes­sion­al bondage as just anoth­er day on the farm.

The stu­dio audi­ence chuck­les, and so does she. The trag­ic core of the film is the idea that peo­ple have no real per­spec­tive on their own suf­fer­ing. It’s about when abuse becomes ambi­ent or nor­malised – you make it so much hard­er for your­self to detect the agony. In once scene she vis­its a doc­tor and is almost amused by the fact that he could even begin to com­pre­hend, let alone fix, her pain.

Yet Gar­land became an emo­tion­al punch­bag pre­cise­ly because oth­ers want­ed to milk prof­its from her abil­i­ties. There was nev­er a Hol­ly­wood dream, it was always a night­mare, despite what she was told from those in her orbit. The film explores the idea of this type of spe­cial tal­ent as being some­thing that is inher­ent to us – as part of who we are. There’s a mon­tage sequence of Judy charg­ing con­fi­dent­ly through her song­book, and from some angles it looks as if she’s per­form­ing through sheer mus­cle mem­o­ry. Zell­weger not only per­forms the songs well, but she per­forms them in a way that actu­al­ly looks like this is the 1,000^th time they’ve been sung – an ultra-dry cock­tail of con­fi­dence and listlessness.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing look at a woman who is too depressed to be depressed, steam­rollered by a lifestyle that has nev­er allowed for nor­mal­cy. Her body has been honed for Hol­ly­wood, and she’s unable to con­vert it back, to use it for fam­i­ly mat­ters and relax­ation. It’s not a maudlin film, but a very sad one – chiefly down to Judy’s eter­nal opti­mism and good humour in the face of so much tough luck. It’s about the shack­les of fame, but it also looks at how good art, the stuff that is remem­bered, can strike a pro­found con­nec­tion with an audi­ence. Art, also, is a shrine in its own right. When the body dies, the art lives on. The mourn­ful final scene cap­tures this sen­ti­ment beautifully.