Mark Reviews Movies: JUDY (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 26, 2019

With her oh-so slight frame and slightly hunched shoulders, the Judy Garland of Judy looks as if she could knocked over by a soft breeze. She acts, though, as if no force in the world could possibly make her budge.

The Garland of this film is beloved by the world but, even with that knowledge, is desperate for any sign of personal affection. By the time of the film's story, she has escaped the abuse of her childhood stardom, which infamously was molded and crafted by a tyrannical studio executive and a steady diet of pills, but the escape has brought no respite and no freedom. Such are the contradictions of the character in this simple but tightly focused and emotionally potent biography.

We all know the stories of Garland's time as a child star, having her diet controlled by handlers who kept food away from her and gave her medication to cease the hunger pangs. The side effects, of course, were an inability to sleep and a lifelong struggle with the addiction that was taught to and forced upon her. She learned this at a young age, and Rupert Goold's film also suggests that Garland learned to doubt, to criticize, and even to hate herself as a child, too. The addiction fuels the self-loathing and vice versa, in a vicious cycle that only has one ending.

Here, a young Judy (played by Darci Shaw), being ushered to an audition for The Wizard of Oz, is told by Louis B. Mayer (Richard Cordery), one of the namesakes of the studio that has her under contact, that, while her job is special, she is not. She is bringing joy to countless people in countless towns across the country, currently suffering from an economic crisis. In each of those town, Mayer says, there's at least one girl who's prettier than her—an entire country of girls who easily could take her place. The threat is implicit. The answer, of course, is that she has to do the job, whatever it may require.

Tom Edge's screenplay (based on Peter Quilter's play End of the Rainbow) is not a straightforward biography. The details of Judy's youth, as a rising and then go-to star at MGM, are limited to the important parts—Mayer's control over her entire life, including staging photo opportunities on literal stages, and the constant withholding of food, as well as the daily doses of pills. The young Judy has a defiant streak throughout these flashbacks, grabbing a large bite of a fellow child star's hamburger on a staged "date" and jumping into the "pool" at a party the studio has faked for her 16th birthday, two months beforehand.

Mayer puts a final nail into that, one supposes, when he reminds her of the particulars of Frances Gumm's life—a nobody from Grand Rapids with a scandalized father and a mother who only cares what the studio head thinks of her daughter. She can be Frances, or she can be Judy. Is that even a choice for this 15-year-old, who has nobody else and already is in the throes of addiction and cannot imagine a life without the unrequited love of an adoring audience?

These flashbacks to Judy's childhood are sparse but effectively placed, especially one that juxtaposes the routines of a child actor with the routines of the now-adult performer. They're basically the same, because Judy wasn't just denied a childhood. She was denied the possibility of growing up into her own person, too.

Most of the film is about Judy during the final year of her life, as she struggles to maintain a regular schedule of performances in a London theater. The adult Judy is played by Renée Zellweger in a transformative and meticulously honed performance, which is primarily vital in the way it shows that most of Judy's life is a performance.

It has to be that way. Nobody would care about Frances Gumm, the insecure girl from Michigan, but they have loved Judy Garland, the girl with the transcendent voice, since she was a kid.

She will be Judy. She will be a star, because, even though she's technically homeless and fighting to keep custody of her two youngest children, that's what everyone expects of her. She will sing. That's why people love her, although a single note, belted out in the privacy of her hotel bathroom before opening night, sounds as if it is choking her.

The plot here is simple: Judy, realizing that she needs to make money again, agrees to the shows in London. She's kept on schedule by Rosalyn (Jessie Buckley), a much kinder handler than the one from her childhood, but the drinking, the pills, and the lack of sleep repeatedly threaten to put every performance in jeopardy.

She has her good nights, when the songs soar to the balcony sections. Zellweger, by the way, does the singing here, quite convincingly in tune and in that unique way Garland performed, and Goold allows the musical numbers to focus on the performance and to exist as an extension of Judy's current state. She has her awful nights, when she isn't certain in what city or what country she's currently performing.

There's a romance of sorts with Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock), a smooth-talking entrepreneur whom she meets at a party in Los Angeles and who flies to London to spend more time with her. She clings to this relationship, because at least it seems real. She even has dinner with a couple of ardent fans, whose sincerity allows her to be herself—or whatever there is of herself left after the decades of show business—if only for just a night.

The film is technically biographical, in that it progresses from a person's past to her present. As simple as the story and the character details might be, though, Goold and Edge have touched upon something deeper here.

It's more about capturing a specific tone, ensuring that every beat of the story and the character modulates that feeling to solidify and intensify the effect. The central tone of Judy is one of mourning—for how Garland's life was defined for her to such an extent that there could never have been anything more to it. We've heard about the tragedy of Garland's life. This film makes us feel it.

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