Chaplin the man was such a defining figure of the last century that "Chaplin" the film was doomed from the start, this is not a comment on Richard Attenborough's directing but on the cinematic format itself. How do you capture the cultural significance of the Little Tramp, the historical magnitude of the Great Dictator, the essence of the comedic genius or the much darker sides of a man with troubling infatuations in a two-and-half hour runtime.
From what I read the original footage was four-hour long and Attenborough stated that the cuts had damaged the film and I'm sure he's right. I can't imagine how many precious bits could have enriched the experience or emphasized the weight of some names in the life of Chaplin, or Chaplin's own weight in the life of America. Unfortunately, for all its good intentions, "Chaplin" is a frustratingly lackluster recalling of episodes in Chaplin's life, key moments that never seem to open any door. The film is told in straight-forward Wikipedia style with roles that have the briefness of cameos, no matter how big the star is.
The film opens with the poor childhood in Victorian London where Charlie was raised by a depressed mother (played by Geraldine Chaplin). That first act already indicates what doesn't go right in the film, it's always on the rush. Childhood is obviously a pivotal moment: we see the mother being booed by the audience and it's her own son that makes up for her failed performance and makes his first steps in the music-hall. We get it: talented kid, troubled mother. When she's sent to the mental asylum, the film offers its first inspired moment where little Chaplin is chased Keystone-style by officers to be put in a workhouse. The childhood part isn't badly made but the Dickensian feel of Charlie's beginnings deserved a little more, Chaplin's most celebrated movies were about poverty, you can't dissociate it from Chaplin. Poverty is only a parenthesis in that film.
Even a gangster epic like "Once Upon a Time in America" couldn't have worked emotionally and narratively if it wasn't for the beautiful 'youth' sequence, if only Attenborough took inspiration from Leone, we could have felt the absence of a father or the loss of his mother as sources of inspiration for "The Kid", something about a lost childhood or an artistry born too early that affected artists like Michael Jackson. Since the childhood part doesn't exceed fifteen minutes, we lose the connection with Chaplin's "Kid", which explains why the film is barely present... until the finale. A film like "Chaplin" doesn't trust its audience, it provides the fictional character of Haydn (an autobiographer played by Anthony Hopkins) whose only purpose is to allow Chaplin to verbalize his thoughts. Even the character of Sidney Chaplin, the brother who always disagrees, seems to exist for the same reasons.
And since the film is in a hurry to cover all the episodes of Charlie's life, we get to the first contract signed with Mac Sennett (Dan Aykroyd) after Chaplin reprised his drunk act. This is probably the finest part of the film where Robert Downey Jr. morphs into the Little Tramp and I just love how the film first treat the birth of the iconic costume as if the Gods of cinema were guiding his hands only to reveal that it was in the heat of the moment. Later, we see the little Tramp being funny and flirting with Mabel Normand (Marisa Tomei) and before we know it, Chaplin is leaving to make his own movies after a feud with Mabel (whose influence on Chaplin is left uncovered). I suspect there were more scenes of the Mac Sennett era but it couldn't get in the way of Chaplin's career, quite the irony!
Fair enough, so we follow the directing of "The Immigrant" where the scene where an emigration officer is kicked stirs the earliest suspicions of Edgar Hoover (Kevin Dunn), the chapter of his life that covers his best hits "The Circus", "The Gold Rush" are used to show his rise to stardom, his earliest relationship and scandals, and the film is densely populated, Kevin Kline is Douglas Fairbanks, Penelop Ann Mirren is Edna Purviance, Milla Jovovich one of Chaplin's conquests but for a movie dedicated to a film-maker, the film work is left totally off-side and the film feels more like a chronological exposé on Chaplin.
The real problem is that by doing this, we never get insights other than what a real documentary would have provided, and maybe figures like Chaplin, too big to be just called artists, are what documentary were made for. Or maybe we should have gotten a director's cut that followed Attenborough's initial idea, I'm still perplex though whether an additional hour and half would have saved the film anyway, maybe focusing on one part of his life could have been more inspired.
Anyway, a few positive notes: the film plunges us in the atmosphere of the silent film era, the costume design, the mood, John Barry's score is sweet, melancholic and captures the heart of Chaplin's film and Robert Downey Jr. does justice to the legacy of Chaplin though I prefer his performance during the comedic moments, I wonder whether the real Chaplin was that somber and introspective. Downey plays it sometimes as if he himself didn't exactly know what to think about him.
The film concludes with a great montage of Chaplin's best scenes (à la "Cinema Paradisio") and this was certainly one of the film's best moments. I realized at that point that maybe they were intended for the big ending and in a way, the scenes were perfectly picked, the Kid part especially, I could feel the pain in his eyes looking at the screen, but such emotional moments were deeply needed, in fact, maybe having real footage is the best way to understand Chaplin.
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