There is in ‘Judy‘, the film directed by Rupert Goold, a scene that could be worth an Oscar. Renée Zellweger who plays a Judy Garland beyond the peak of her artistic career, prematurely aged and overwhelmed with personal problems, climbs on stage for the first of the London shows that maybe could save her artistic career and earn her the money that would allow her to keep her two younger children. In the 3 or 4 minutes that the scene lasts we see the woman stricken until then by doubts and problems regaining her self-confidence under the lights of the stage, making contact with the audience that adores with her when she succeeds but is ready to drive her off the stage when she fails, transforming herself in the actress and singer full of charm and charisma who had once conquered the world.Filmed in a single shot and with the actress most of the time in close-up, this scene also represents what this movie could have been. Unfortunately, not only this is the best scene in the film, but it is also repeated several times with increasingly diminished effects, and almost the rest of the film is far from its level and the ambitions of the filmmakers.
It may be that Renée Zellweger will received, at least, a well-deserved nomination for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. But the film disappointed me, although it did contain a powerful and interesting story. Judy Garland’s life is portrayed in the film in two parallel paths: that of the former star in a financial and moral crisis, struggling to keep her children and – through flash-backs – the period when she transformed from a an anonymous teenage girl in Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and from here to a world-famous star. The problem is that the parallel is very obvious, the ideas are few and quite trivial, and their repetition has a negative effect on the audience who understood almost everything from the first 15 minutes.
There are quite a lot of ideas in the script, which, developed, could have made the film more interesting. London in 1968 was the place and the time for a significant cultural revolution and, in parallel, of a conflict of generations and styles between entertainment music (to which Judy Garland belonged) and the pop and rock music of the younger generations. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are mentioned in passing, and that’s it. Judy Garland and her song ‘Over the Rainbow’ had become symbols of the LGBT rights movement which was taking off. To date, there are disputes about the reasons for this adoption, it was a good opportunity to dig deeper. Director Rupert Goold (at his second feature film) chose to bring the issue into the film through a secondary and somewhat anecdotal-sentimental story thread. What a pity. If ‘Judy‘ had the ambition to use the wave of rebirth of the musical genre started about three years ago with ‘La La Land‘, the opportunity to make a memorable film was missed.