According to his own oft repeated
account, Kevin Spacey labors under something of an obsession with the singer
Bobby Darin, whose life and career inspire the new movie Beyond the Sea. After several years, a number of false starts, and
some pre-production difficulties, Spacey ended up collaborating on the script
and directing the picture, in which he stars as Darin, singing many of Darin’s
best known songs and recapitulating a version of the performer’s brief,
sometimes confused life. Although the film manages to entertain in a relatively
workmanlike fashion, it lacks the strength and depth that the basic material
should yield, settling instead for a kind of dutiful and superficial attention
to its emotional content.
The movie resembles a hundred other
musical biographies in its story of a singer’s rise to fame and fortune, the
usual problems that accompany those much desired objects, and a climactic
triumph over adversity. Darin’s life, however, differed from most of his peers
because he sang and danced in the looming shadow of death.
Stricken in childhood with rheumatic
fever that damaged his heart, he was not expected to reach his 15th year. He
fooled the doctors, however, and lived to the ripe old age of 37, performing
right up to the end.
Spacey tells Darin’s story in a
mixture of styles, beginning in the middle and proceeding through a series of
flashbacks that frequently interrupt the normal narrative. He and other
characters provide a voiceover narration in many sequences, explaining what his
picture apparently cannot, and patching over gaps in the singer’s career.
In addition, he shows the grownup
Bobby Darin conversing with his younger self, Bobby Cassotto (William Ullrich),
often arguing about the proper interpretation of his personality and life, with
the boy instructing the adult in the truth of an event. The child, as
Wordsworth said, is father to the man.
The sick young boy benefited from the
attention of a doting mother (Brenda Blethyn), who encouraged his love of music
and inspired his career. When he changed his name to Bobby Darin, according to
the picture, his career took off, and he rapidly became one of the most popular
young singers of a time (the 1950s and ’60s) when most of the male vocalists
seemed to be Italian — Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin,
Vic Damone, Jerry Vale, etc. He made a number of hit records, sang on
television, won numerous awards, and played the Copacabana when that nightclub
represented the pinnacle of an entertainer’s success.
With the help of his devoted manager,
Steve Blauner (John Goodman), Darin also made a career in the movies, even
winning an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role in Captain Newman, M.D. While working on a
film in Italy he fell in love with one of his fellow actors, the 18-year-old
Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth), pursued her zealously against the wishes of her
overbearing mother (Greta Scacchi), and, yes, married her. The singer and the
ingénue became the darlings of the movie magazines, the talented and handsome
young couple with great careers and the perfect Hollywood marriage, the Ken and
Barbie of their time.
In the usual manner of such things,
the match progresses downward as the brash, wildly ambitious kid from the Bronx
competes with the innocent young woman who played Tammy and Gidget and even
some troubled adolescents in the decade that essentially invented the teenager.
Bobby’s singing career takes him all
over the country, while Sandra reluctantly accompanies him, eventually seeking
solace in the bottle while her husband’s star glows ever brighter.
Again in the usual manner of the
musical biopic Spacey interrupts the narrative to sing some of the trademark
songs, several of them written by Darin himself, and demonstrates some talent
of his own, moving with some grace and imitating the singer’s mellow voice. The
picture, however, suffers from a kind of perfunctory approach to its emotional
content, conveying little passion and generating no chemistry in the
relationship between Darin and Dee. The most convincing emotions derive from
the singer’s relationship with his sister Nina (Caroline Aaron) and her husband
Charlie (Bob Hoskins), which ultimately creates the greatest personal crisis in
the film.
The greatest disappointment in Beyond the Sea arises from its failure
to exploit its most powerful material, the fatal destiny that stalks Darin and
presumably fueled his great ambition. The mysterious birth, the meteoric
career, the various and fabulous successes, the fairytale wedding, and the early
death should make the singer a cult figure, perhaps even rivaling his contemporary
Elvis Presley, whose weird life and squalid end have not precluded him from
sainthood.
Spacey, however, passes up the
opportunity to turn the life into something rich and different. He chooses
instead a bland and curiously flat interpretation, a mildly entertaining
musical instead of something approaching tragedy.
Beyond the Sea (PG-13), starring
Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, John Goodman; written by Kevin Spacey and Lewis
Golick; directed by Kevin Spacey. Canandaigua Theatres, Pittsford Plaza
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2005.
