Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Rupert Goold, Foxtel.
The resemblance to showbiz legend Judy Garland is uncanny as Renée Zellweger (Cold Mountain, Bridget Jones’s Diary) portrays her in the 2019 biopic Judy. Renée’s portrayal of Garland won her an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Zellweger impresses with amazing realism, comfortably reinvigorating those familiar facial expressions — eyes crease in conjunction with a quivering pout — her gait, carriage, stances and most of all, the unbelievable vocal rhythms of the actress, singer, dancer and vaudevillian.
The film looks at the last year in Garland’s life, delving into the tragic decline, near the end of her life in Goold’s big-screen adaptation of a play by Peter Quilter. The scene is set: its winter in 1968 and Garland arrives in swinging London to perform in a sell-out run at The Talk of the Town.
It’s three decades since she had shot to global stardom in The Wizard of Oz, but the dramatic intensity of her voice has grown, even as its somewhat declined. Her wit and charm are winners, as she prepares for the show, captivating musicians, battling with management and ruminating with admiring fans and friends.
Judy is fragile, though her dreams of romance seem hopeful as she embarks on a courtship with Mickey Deans, her soon-to-be fifth husband. She is tired, after working for 45 of her 47 years, troubled by memories of a childhood lost to Hollywood and obsessed by a desire to be back home with her children.
Featuring some of her best-known songs, including the timeless classic Over the Rainbow, Judy ‘celebrates the voice, the capacity for love and the sheer pizzazz of the world’s greatest entertainer’.
Two of Garland’s most critically acclaimed roles included being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in A Star Is Born (1954) and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
It’s fascinating to watch the star’s familiar well-remembered movements though disheartening to realise she had enough unhappiness to last more than a lifetime. Her life was cut short, and it takes this movie to focus on her twilight days that provides a better understanding of what drove her to an early grave at just 47. Compassionate connection.
