Since I am an only occasional fan of Depp's, I was not sure what to expect when I watched this. I must say I was very impressed. It is a rare thing to see a non-foreign film which does not deteriorate into "warm fuzzies" and smear and blur it's content to make it saccharine enough for American audiences to swallow. We seem to be stuck in some Hollywood Hell of happy movies with happy endings. Even when a film isn't bright and shiny, how often do you not have the safety net of knowing in the back of your mind that somehow everything be "be all right" for at least someone in the movie? I found it refreshing to see an unpleasant movie full of unpleasant people, where even if someone was a good person, it didn't really help them at all. Real life sucks, and so do a lot of people. Depp's character wasn't a nice man. The people around him did not have an easy time. Nobody really had a good life. Welcome to the real world. Real people are very often very, very unpleasant and unlikeable. Depp was in this---and I loved him for it. It made him human.
Review of The Libertine
