The Dresser (2016)

It is, it really is, just as magnificent, powerful and enthralling as you would imagine.

If the relatively simple parallel of the man and his role were all there was to The Dresser, it would be mildly interesting. But what makes it far more than that are the shades of longing, resentment, spite and indifference displayed by members of Sir’s circle.

It’s a fully-fledged ode to the medium that birthed both television and movies. Everyone, both the real-life Dressers and actual Sirs, should be proud.

There’s nothing immediately grabby about this film, beyond the promise of watching two of the best actors of the past half-century dance gracefully around each other for the better part of two hours. But sometimes that’s enough--especially when neither man misses a step.

It’s a vehicle for two graying actors that gives both a chance for tour-de-force performances, and in the new television version Monday on Starz, a couple of esteemed veterans, Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen, get about as much out of the tale as there is to get.

Watching Messrs. Hopkins and McKellen in the full expression of their powers--in a TV setting but stagelike enough to be a stellar showcase--is a treat as good as the play itself.

The Dresser may not be for everyone. It's intimate--in the sense of being both small and intensely personal; it taps into a niche (these are not movie stars); it's all about the power of Shakespeare; it reads, despite the flourishes that Eyre makes as a director to keep it dimensional, as a play shot as a TV movie; and its pacing is odd, but enjoyable.

Sir resembles the Shakespeare character he’s playing, and that’s the chief flaw in Harwood’s play--a too-easy irony. But Harwood makes up for it with the crackling dialogue that pushes The Dresser along at a terrific pace.

A claustrophobic but ultimately affecting TV movie starring Ian McKellen and Anthony Hopkins.

Unavoidably stagey in director's Richard Eyre's intimate adaptation, this tour de force is an ode to the actor's art and the sacrifice it entails. [23 May-3 Jun 2016, p.15]

Instead of expanding it, in the stage-to-screen tradition, screenwriter-director Richard Eyre (“The Hollow Crown”) chooses to close it in, setting it entirely in the theater and reverting, he says, to the original Ronald Harwood play. That makes The Dresser both claustrophobic and sometimes numbingly talky, especially given the fast pace of the chatter and the range of accents. This can all be a struggle for American viewers, but persist and the result should prove worth it.

To watch them [McKellan and Hopkins] share in their characters' history and intimacy, or intermittently dig underneath each other's skin through those very means, renders The Dresser an effective portrait of the pitfalls and pleasures of a working relationship, but it's a missed opportunity for a more full-bodied look at the life of a theater, and the toils and passion of all those involved.