Film star Elizabeth Taylor invites her ex-husband - twice over - Richard Burton to her fiftieth birthday party where as a recovering alcoholic he refuses to get drunk with her. He does however consider her suggestion that they star in a stage revival of the play Private Lives. As they announce the project the press speculate on a romantic reconciliation. With a new girlfriend and the prospect of playing king Lear Burton is not happy with the project especially with Taylors pill-popping and her lack of stage experience which causes problems at rehearsal. The play opens to a critical trashing but is popular with audiences chiefly again to Burtons chagrin because they want to see Taylor and when she is ill numbers dwindle and the show is put on hold. After a two month run with a projected tour the curtain comes down and Taylor tells Burton she has always loved him and still does. A year later however his old life-style catches up with him and he is dead.
Review
ȫurton and Taylor" starts weakly because it takes a while to accept Dominic West as a dissipated 57yearold Richard Burton and Helena BonhamCarter as legendary glamour puss Liz Taylor. But West wins us over first of all with his deep voice and cultivated enunciations (which was what Burton was primarily known for) then secondarily his Burtonstyle cheek folds and greying temples provide just enough distraction from West's own robust youthfulness finally West projects a pervasive worldly cynicism tempered with a basic humanity. BonhamCarter has the coloring and heat of Taylor something of the physique (though less buxom) slightly similar facial features enhanced by careful camera angles and she effectively duplicates Taylor's weak whiny voice. She redeems herself for her abominable performance in 2012's ⋚rk Shadows."
The scope of the story with the exception of one flashback is wisely limited to several months in 1983 when the famous twicemarried twicedivorced couple reunited to play the leads in Noel Coward's "Private Lives" on Broadway. They were both too old for their parts and Taylor was not remotely adept at stage acting but superficially at least their own relationship resembled that of the tempestuous couple at the heart of Coward's play. And that was enough for starstruck Broadway audiences to guarantee a financially successful – if artistically disastrous production. Highlights of this extended public embarrassment – from early rehearsals through closing night – are interspersed with peaks and valleys in the BurtonTaylor personal drama.
Burton emerges as a skilled and erudite artist waylaid by dependency on drugs (alcohol and cigarettes) Taylor as an intelligent but spoiled pillpopping selfabsorbed star monster the kind only Hollywood could create the pair as mutually dependent devourers and enablers of each other—in short a mythic representation and exaggeration of average couples in general which indeed was part of their mass appeal.
There are so many revelatory truths scattered amidst the dross of the TVmoviestyle mise enscene that one can only surmise that the creative personnel behind this effort actually cared about and emotionally connected with their subjects. A few examples the startling scene backstage when Taylor in midconversation with Burton suddenly slugs him in the face for having spoken rudely to her staff moments earlier the closeup on their hands clasped together and then separating during a curtain call pointing up the unstable unitydisunity of their relationship as expressed by the failuresuccess of their play the dynamic of their on stage interactions as Taylor thanks to her sheer star power gets away with running roughshod over Noel Coward's verbal architecture while Burton the trained stage veteran struggles to anchor the proceedings with actorly skill Burton's frequent quoting from Shakespeare to express powerful feelings reflective of his early absorption of and inner devotion to the classics of literature which not only fueled his youthful rise to success but sustained him through subsequent decades of personal and artistic dissolution.
This is the second biopic about this pair in the last year the previous one being the forgettable quickie starring Lindsay Lohan. ȫurton and Taylor" manages to obliterate its predecessor.