Review of The Cat's Meow (2001) by Lía B — 04 Jan 2007

There are actually more versions of what happened on William Randolph Heart's yacht, the [i]Oneida[/i], that weekend than there were passengers. The dead hold their silence on this one, and so we must pass on accuracy to the truth. Even the list of passengers has a dozen variations--and in half of them, Ince isn't among them, though there is now no reasonable doubt that he was.

Tom Ince died, and no one who knew talked about how or why. That, we know.

Kirsten Dunst, who I don't like, makes a passable Marion Davies, at least as she is portrayed here. She is shallow. She is vapid. She has a good heart, but gods alone know its direction. She says she was telling Tom Ince that she never loved Chaplin, but I rather doubt it. She may not have been in love with him, but I doubt that as well. She just loved Hearst more.

The life portrayed in this film seems, I think, accurate to the era. It's the life that led, in its own way, to the Great Depression. In some ways, it can be seen to be a metaphor for the Twenties as a whole. The forced gaiety to cover up anything that's wrong, which leads up to the inevitable crash.

If I were Marion Davies . . . . Well. Easy to say I would've left the all-powerful William Randolph Hearst, he who made [i]Citizen Kane[/i] a flop in its initial release. But it seems to me none of these people understand a single human emotion that isn't based on getting whatever they want.

This is a stylized movie. It is an excellent vision of its time. The costumes are lovely, as are the sets. The original plan, it seems, was to have the film shot in black and white, but instead, it seems a rather distant colour. It's almost dreamlike, though I supposed part of that is because of the unreality of the costumes--and yet they're quite real for the time.

The one problem I have with this film's casting of Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin is that I've seen enough Eddie Izzard standup to recognize his mannerisms through his depiction. I saw a lot of Charlie Chaplin when I was a child, as they played it on Fridays in the library. I believe this Charlie. I just picture him in heels.