‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers‘ is a film – for me – inexplicably underrated. Made in 2004 by director Stephen Hopkins, it brings to the screen the film career and private life of Peter Sellers, one of the most talented and interesting comic actors of the ’60s and ’70s, a personality with a very intense and very controversial public exposure. Biopics of great stars are not easy subjects, but here we are dealing, in my opinion, with an intelligent script and a good opportunity for complex roles and I mean not only the main role but also several of the supporting roles, in a movie that combines biography with film within a film, in a docu-comedy style very suitable for the hero of the film. At no point did I feel bored and I think that the image we form after watching the film about who Peter Sellers was is more complete and closer to the truth.
The film is based on a biographical book about Peter Sellers’ that is quite severe concerning the actor’s behavior in his private life. The story begins at the launching of Sellers’ career on the big screens, after he had already managed to create a name and image for himself on British television, and follows him over more than two decades, four marriages and other more or less serious love affairs, real or imagined. The resulting portrait is complex and fascinating. Peter Sellers is at the same time a womanizer but also a man who accepts and appreciates the support of his first wife, he is a negligent son at times but who is deeply marked by the deaths of his parents, he is a husband and father at times violent but also capable of gestures of great generosity. The mimicry of his acting method makes him live his characters and bring them even to real life. He loves, but in a chaotic way and with bursts of passion alternating with abysses of indifference. He has violent outbursts that he attributes to stress. He invests everything in perfecting his acting skills, but once he reaches the peak of his popularity, he begins to doubt the authenticity of his vocation and lives with constant anxiety about not repeating himself. Was he a great actor, but a detestable man? Stephen Hopkins avoids judging him and the mitigating circumstances he grants him are related to the acting profession. This was, perhaps, Peter Sellers’ ultimate love.
Stephen Hopkins found in Geoffrey Rush the ideal actor to play the portrait of Peter Sellers in all its complexity. It is one of the great roles of Rush‘s career, but if I try to remember all his roles, which one was not great? A gallery of characters evolves around him, most of them real – actors, directors, Sellers’ family and lovers. Each one is excellently outlined and this film is a very good opportunity for special creations in secondary roles, smaller or larger. Emily Watson is superb in the role of the first wife, who remained a loyal friend even after the breakup. Charlize Theron naturally enters the role of Britt Ekland, the Scandinavian star who was Sellers’ second wife. John Lithgow – an actor I like a lot – is excellent in the role of Blake Edwards, the director of the Pink Panther film series. Stanley Tucci takes on the huge challenge of bringing Stanley Kubrick to the screen. Only the actress who embodied Sophia Loren disappointed me. ‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers‘ is one of those biographical films about the art of film and its heroes that manages to be good cinema, so a fitting homage.