Barrymore (Erik Canuel, 2011): CANADA

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.  Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

  John Barrymore was a famous stage and screen thespian, whose family name is synonymous with American theatre.

Barrymore began as a one-man act, stage production in Canada, it moved to Broadway in 1997 and was performed by Christopher Plummer, who won a Tony Award for his fine performance.  In 2011 Erik Canuel filmed the production before a live audience in Canada.

Barrymore  takes place in the 1940’s under the guise that John Barrymore (Christopher Plummer), now toward the end of his life, is trying to revive his stage career – which began early in the 1900’s, playing diverse characters from silly to the sublime, including Hamlet.

Barrymore has had a successful movie career, beginning with silents due to his devilish good looks, and also in talkies due to his great vocal austerity.  A great affection for “his baby” (alcohol) knows no bounds, as he wheels out a small cart of liquor on to the stage and prepares to tell the audience a tale of his past.

In what he refers to as a “backer’s audition,” and amongst thunderous applause, Barrymore moves gracefully across the stage hanging his hat, pouring a drink, and chuckling to himself as his mind drifts to happier times, before noticing that he is alone with a vacant audience.

Frank (John Plumpis) who is Barrymore’s reader, feeds him lines, off stage left, and the nagging voice abruptly brings Barrymore back to the present and reality.

Back and forth it goes, as Frank throws Barrymore a line, whereby he recites it with perfect elocution and then drifts off into yet another humorous anecdote about an ex-lover or one of his siblings, while staying completely in character, thus causing incessant frustration in Frank, until the two end up bickering like an old married couple.

Known for his witticisms, which is evident in films such as Dinner at Eight (1933) and Twentieth Century (1934), Plummer adeptly executes the Barrymore persona with such exacting precision, that eerily you forget it’s Christopher Plummer.  And what is even more impressive is his crusty impersonation of brother Lionel.

Humorous throughout, with a touch of melancholia – observing that much of his talent was wasted on alcohol, Erik Canuel’s production is flawless.  The film opens as a theater production but suddenly the stage transforms into a screen and the film to black and white, giving the film audience the sensation of stepping back in time and into Barrymore’s life.

Christopher Plummer ought to have been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for this scintillating performance.