Review: Dorian Gray

I can’t help thinking that this film gave me the wrong impression. Its whole anti-hero character structure is based off the Victorian tale from which it was adapted, and so this doesn’t really correlate with modern values. In fact, the main antagonist (other than the protagonist himself) is a pretty ok guy.

            So, we’re introduced to Dorian Gray, this guy with absolutely no back story or personality beyond having a mother and a father. He’s come to live in London and is painted by an artist who loves his image, while he falls under the influence of Lord Henry (Colin Firth with a smashing goatee) who is an opportunist, obsessed with life’s pleasures. Apparently, based on a conversation where Dorian says he would sell his soul to live forever, he is forever bound to the painting, which absorbs all of his evils and imperfections while leaving him untouched. It seems like an interesting idea, but the way it’s executed in the first part of the film means that it comes off as unendingly dull, and the interactions comically bad.

            Anyway, after the original artist sees the evil painting, Dorian (for some god-awful reason) decides that he has to die, and strangles him. He runs away, and we flash forward to twenty five years later, where everyone’s wearing a grey wig and Dorian returns, exactly the same as before. (Of course, nobody notices that 25 years of aging seem to have passed him by.) He falls in love with Lord Henry’s daughter, but Lord Henry, who seems to be the only one that has twigged, decides to burn the painting and the house that Dorian lives, so as to kill him. Dorian ends up destroying the painting himself.

            So, bad characterisations, terrible pacing (I was shocked to see what I thought of as a week was actually a year) and bad moral matching. This is not only a dull film, it is a bad film, and one you should avoid.

Thanks.