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JUDY – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The life and death of Judy Garland stands as one of Hollywood’s most tragic cautionary tales. As a young actress she was catapulted to stardom in 1939 at the age of just 17 when she appeared in The Wizard of Oz, but over the next thirty years her life was a rollercoaster of cinematic and musical successes and failures, mental illness problems, drug addiction and alcoholism, failed marriages, and studio-mandated meddling which effectively destroyed her private life. Garland died of a barbiturate overdose in London in 1969, a shell of the woman she had once been. She was only 47 but her career as a Hollywood leading light had long since dimmed, and she had been reduced to playing revues at small nightclubs, partly to simply pay her bills, and partly as a way to possibly reignite her work. Director Rupert Goold’s film Judy, based on the play ‘End of the Rainbow’ by Peter Quilter, is an intimate look at those last months of Garland’s life as she reflects on her years, not knowing that she was in the latter stages of it. The film is anchored by an astonishing performance by Renee Zellweger as Garland, who somehow simultaneously captures both the glamorousness of her early life and the booze-soaked faded glory that typified her last hurrah. Read more…
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