Being the Ricardos

Cer­tain things age like fine wine; oth­ers like warm milk. Set in the anti­quat­ed world of cosy Amer­i­can sit­coms and 1960s gen­der pol­i­tics, Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricar­dos explores the rela­tion­ship between small-screen leg­ends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, cre­ators and stars of I Love Lucy. As the open­ing mock­u­men­tary-style inter­views tell us, at its peak the show reg­u­lar­ly pulled in 60 mil­lion view­ers – it was so pop­u­lar that busi­ness­es would change their open­ing hours to accom­mo­date it.

We meet the cou­ple in a ​“com­pound frac­ture” of a week: a mag­a­zine has accused Desi of cheat­ing; Lucille is preg­nant and being accused of being a com­mu­nist at the height of McCarthy­ism. Despite these being real events, Sorkin takes cre­ative licence by com­pact­ing them into the same work­ing week, show­ing Ball and Arnaz deal­ing with the fall out in between table reads and block­ing rehearsals.

Yet while the char­ac­ters are con­sumed with the pro­duc­tion of the show, the film uses it as only a means to an end. We see flash­es of Ball fig­ur­ing out the minu­ti­ae of the phys­i­cal com­e­dy, the log­ic of the dia­logue, and the com­po­si­tion of each frame – it’s deeply unfun­ny stuff, but serves to high­light her ded­i­ca­tion to her craft and the super-seri­ous­ness of her approach.

Ball and Arnaz are a very dif­fer­ent peo­ple to Lucy and Ricky. Kidman’s Ball is a quick-wit­ted, Katharine Hep­burn-esque ice queen, draw­ing deep on a cig­a­rette before land­ing insults in a sharply-tai­lored suit. She’s giv­en peri­od-appro­pri­ate arched eye­brows and pros­thet­ics to round out her face, which to be fair to the make­up depart­ment, aren’t near­ly as eerie as the trail­er sug­gests, but still feel super­flu­ous. Kidman’s per­for­mance is strong enough: why couldn’t she have been trust­ed to con­vince us as Ball with­out the rub­ber cheeks?

Unham­pered by pros­thet­ics, Javier Bar­dem is sen­sa­tion­al as Arnaz, sell­ing the character’s intel­li­gence and dev­il­ish charm. Although cast­ing a Span­ish actor to play a Cuban icon is evi­dence of Hollywood’s fail­ure to address the era­sure of Lat­inx actors, Bar­dem is oth­er­wise per­fect­ly suit­ed to the role. Hav­ing been chased out of Cuba by the Bol­she­viks, Desi became an extreme­ly patri­ot­ic Amer­i­can despite being treat­ed as a sec­ond-class cit­i­zen. The love between him and Lucille is deeply felt, but his nar­row idea of mas­culin­i­ty means that, for all that he wants Lucille to come see him per­form, it pains him to watch the crowd turn away to gawp at her.

In real­i­ty Arnaz was the pres­i­dent of Desilu Pro­duc­tions, and while Lucille was cer­tain­ly the face, she insist­ed to any­one who would lis­ten that he ​“runs this show”. While osten­si­bly Being the Ricar­dos gives Desi his dues, Sorkin presents us with a com­plex and flawed man, one whose her­itage was weaponised against him in the same way that Ball’s gen­der, age and appear­ance were weaponised against her. Trag­i­cal­ly, the film posits that rather than empathis­ing with each other’s plights, this drove a wedge between them – one that no amount of roman­tic ges­tures could bridge.

Flash­backs aside, Sorkin large­ly con­tains the action with­in I Love Lucy’s sound stage, which only inten­si­fies the cen­tral rela­tion­ship. Lucille declares that the only time her mar­riage tru­ly exists is on stage, and she (like Sorkin) unwise­ly clings to this notion. In the sec­ond act, nods to the show’s elab­o­rate set-pieces, repeat­ed dis­cus­sions around cam­era block­ing and a laboured entrance joke are a real drag; far more inter­est­ing is the dynam­ic between Ball and the female co-work­ers who call her out fem­i­nist lapses.

Some clas­sic Sorkin’ and talkin’ brings ener­gy to pro­ceed­ings – par­tic­u­lar­ly when Bar­dem threat­ens to pull someone’s lungs out of their throat – but Being the Ricar­dos falls apart in a third act that feels forced and anti­cli­mac­tic. While Sorkin, Kid­man and Bar­dem breathe life into these sit­com icons, their lives ulti­mate­ly prove too big and too messy to fit with­in this film’s constraints.