Prick Up Your Ears Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Prick Up Your Ears Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 17, 2015

It’s probably not too difficult of a task for fans of the Fab Four to name the films the group appeared in, namely A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Yellow Submarine (well, their music if not their actual voices, anyway), and Let It Be constitute their entire filmography (though some may choose to include their television special Magical Mystery Tour as well). What even some diehard aficionados of The Beatles don’t know, though, is that there were several other films that were at least proposed during the height of their fame, but which for one reason or another never got made. One of these was a farce called Up Against It, which would have sported a screenplay by a playwright who was in the late sixties becoming as infamous as John, Paul, George and Ringo themselves, one Joe Orton. Orton had been a journeyman writer for some time before starting to break through circa 1964, though for a certain segment of the cultured elite, he was perhaps better known in those early days for having done a stint in jail for defacing a rather large collection of library books as part of an elaborate prank he orchestrated with his long time partner Kenneth Halliwell. Orton and Halliwell’s relationship was fraught with a certain dysfunction from virtually the get go, something that only increased once Orton started to tenuously grasp the veritable brass ring, while Halliwell sat and stewed at his own lack of success. Halliwell ended up murdering Orton in a horrifying attack with a hammer, before downing a bottle of barbiturates and committing suicide himself.

Orton’s oeuvre at that point included only a few plays, and of those only one, Loot (later made into a film with Richard Attenborough and Lee Remick), could really have been called a success. (It’s worth noting that even that success came only after some semi-disastrous early stagings, and when the London production was finally ported over to The Great White Way in 1968, it crashed and burned spectacularly, as dealt with tangentially in William Goldman’s fascinating account of the 1967-68 Broadway year, The Season.) Perhaps due to the hideous manner of his death, Orton’s work attained new luster post-mortem, and several of his other works, including Funeral Games and What the Butler Saw, continued to burnish his reputation, even as some hoity toity types continued to be aghast at Orton’s tendency toward skewering everything from societal manners to religion to class interactions. In the mid- to late seventies, John Lahr (son of The Wizard of Oz’s Cowardly Lion, Bert) started investigating Orton’s brief life and career, publishing his biography of the writer, Prick Up Your Ears, in 1978. It was almost a decade later that the film adaptation appeared, offering Gary Oldman as Orton and Alfred Molina as Halliwell. If there’s no real suspense as to where this sad (even tragic) tale is heading, Stephen Frears’ film provides stunning showcases for its star duo, as well as a notable supporting cast that includes Vanessa Redgrave as Orton’s agent Peggy Ramsey.

Alan Bennett’s adaptive screenplay ping pongs across time periods, doling out information about Orton and Halliwell courtesy of flashbacks, as a framing device dealing with Lahr (Wallace Shawn) and Ramsey poring over Orton’s diaries provides context in the form of a certain kind of hindsight. The film is perhaps less concerned with career matters than in exploring Orton’s perhaps self-destructive sexual proclivities, activities that included probably unnecessarily risky behaviors in what was then a pretty dangerously homophobic environment in Great Britain. That at least sets up an interesting frisson between Orton and Halliwell (who’s a bit more closeted, though even Orton himself isn’t overly eager to share his sexuality with the public at large), one which eventually spills over into the career aspect once Orton’s writing begins to take off.

Orton is shown to be something of a trickster, and Oldman brings a puckish quality to the character that is both scabrous but surprisingly vulnerable at times. Halliwell remains a bit more a cipher, an evidently talented guy who nonetheless becomes more and more of a hanger on once Orton’s star begins to rise. Molina peeks beneath the frustration and resentment to deliver a well rounded portrait, one wallowing in a certain amount of pitch black (and at times self loathing) humor, but some of Halliwell’s motivations seem a little murky on occasion.

Some more conservative types will probably find certain aspects of Prick Up Your Ears questionable, if not downright objectionable, but the film manages to rather smartly recreate an era that was both provocative and strangely reactive to those very provocations. Orton is shown as seeming to understand that kind of peculiar dialectic, but there's little doubt that he delighted in poking and prodding a society that refused to accept iconoclasts or those who didn't cotton to traditional norms and mores. There’s an unavoidable melancholy wafting through this tale, but as in many of Orton’s own plays, there’s a viscerally intense sense of dark comedy informing the story as well.

By the way, for those who like cult musical properties, Todd Rundgren actually musicalized Up Against It!, which had a brief run at Joseph Papp's Public Theater off-Broadway in 1989. Rundgren released an album of demos in 1997 which perspicacious fans can track down (if they don't mind paying a pretty penny for it).

Prick Up Your Ears Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Prick Up Your Ears is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Culled from the MGM vault (by way of Samuel Goldwyn Productions), this looks a bit dated, though acceptable, with typical signs of age related wear and tear, a somewhat soft overall appearance, and (at times at least) a slightly faded looking palette. Clarity is quite good throughout the presentation, and close-ups deliver very good levels of fine detail. There is only middling detail available in the many dimly lit or nighttime sequences. Grain looks natural and resolves organically throughout the presentation.

Prick Up Your Ears Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Prick Up Your Ears' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track offers a workmanlike if somewhat narrow sounding track, one which more than adequately supports the film's dialogue, effects and score, without ever really offering superb dynamic range. Fidelity is fine, with no age related wear and tear to report.

Prick Up Your Ears Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:45)

Prick Up Your Ears Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Joe Orton continues to be a cult figure for many, though it's perhaps a little sad that he's not better known and/or appreciated by the public at large, for his pitch black comedic sense seems perfectly in tune with today's cynical post-modernism. Prick Up Your Ears provides incredible showcases for both Oldman and Molina, both of whom tear into their roles with authenticity and a surprising amount of feeling. The supporting cast is similarly impressive, and the story itself is riveting if ultimately quite sad. Technical merits are generally very good on this release, and Prick Up Your Ears comes Recommended.