ME AND ORSON WELLES, Richard Linklater’s winning re-creation of the backstage machinations at a 1937 production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar by a 23-year-old pre–Citizen Kane Orson Welles. Linklater’s Welles, played to the hilt by Christian McKay, is a womanizing, terrorizing megalomaniac who also is charming, charismatic, a genius.
On a Toronto street, I stopped the Chicago-based critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who knew Welles and has written books and essays about him. What were his quick thoughts on the movie? Rosenbaum: “The scene on a park bench where he charms the young man to rejoin his company, that’s Welles. He holding a grudge and getting people fired? That’s not the Welles I knew. He’s such a mythical figure, people invent all kinds of things that had nothing to do with him. But the guy playing Welles is uncanny, getting some of his charm and spirit. So I like the film with certain reservations. I hope it gets distribution, but projects with Orson Welles tend to be cursed.”
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As much as I lament the continuing decline of attendance at the cineplex, it’s also easy to understand.
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With pundits already reading political significance into summer blockbusters like The Dark Knight (“Is Batman a stand-in for George Bush? Discuss.”), the meatier movies of fall arrive not a moment too soon.
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What is the Miracle at St. Anna? Maybe that a filmmaker capable of the eloquence of When the Levees Broke could make such an incoherent movie.
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This article originally ran in the January 13, 1987 issue of the Boston Phoenix .
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The Killdevils have been kicking around the area to much acclaim over the past six years.
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Alexander Mackendrick, who's the subject of a tribute at the Harvard Film Archive this weekend, is a somewhat mysterious figure in movie history.
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