Beyond the Sea
Produced and directed by Kevin Spacey
Starring Kevin Spacey
reviewed by Marc Goldin
There are indulgences allowed a great performer that might prove to be an undoing. Forget rock and roll, if you can. Leave bebop alone for the moment. Think -- Elvis’s drugs, Marlon Brando’s solitude, or any aspect of Michael Jackson’s life. Kevin Spacey is not immune from it. But then, you knew that.
With his narrow cut sharkskin suits, skinny ties and slight sneer, Bobby Darin epitomized cool with attitude. Having snagged Sandra Dee was not too shabby either. While not a cultural icon like Sinatra, Elvis or James Dean, he had elements of each of them. A little slicker and smooth without Dean’s or the younger Elvis’s hint of danger and rebellion, Darin still had a loner outsider image. May be it was just the particular juncture in time for me, but as a teenager, I thought he was the coolest. Apparently, so did Kevin Spacey.
Having seen ‘Beyond the Sea’, theoretically a biopic about Bobby Darin, produced and directed by Kevin Spacey, who also stars in it as Darin, I find myself, weeks later, still not sure what it is that I saw. Maybe this is a sort of disclaimer with regard to an actual review of it because even now, I’m not quite sure how to really do it justice. For absolute starters, Spacey, at 46, is almost 10 years older than Darin was when he died at 37, but attempting to play him when he was probably 10 to 12 years younger. That, in itself, might not really present a problem but part of Darin’s appeal, at least to me, was his youth.
The film opens with Spacey/Darin singing one of his tunes at the Copa in front of his backup orchestra. Holding the mic with one hand and snapping his fingers with the other, he seems to be a reasonable approximation of Bobby Darin. A minute or two into it, he stops the song. At first, I think that this is a rehearsal but then quickly realize that there is an audience and it appears to be a show. Once he starts talking, it becomes clear that within the film, there is a biopic in progress, a kind of film within a film. From there, it gets stranger, with Darin being confronted here and there by a child version of himself (played cloyingly by William Ullrich) and the periodic break into cast song and dance numbers.
Those are fairly minor quibbles, requiring that I adjust my expectation going in, of the standard biopic format. This too, was easily done – enjoying the camped up impressions of Darin’s family and close associates, played by Bob Hoskins (brother-in-law, Charlie), Caroline Aaron (sister Nina), Brenda Blethyn (mother Polly) and John Goodman (friend and advisor, Steve Blauner). It was the portrayal of his relationship with Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth) that finally did it. Depicted as a kind of adolescent chaste boyfriend/girlfriend thing, it certainly wasn’t how it really had been. Again, that was part of the appeal of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, that youthful smoldering sexuality and rebellion.
I think I understand what Kevin Spacey was trying to do. He obviously adored Bobby Darin and wanted to make a tribute film to him, having the money, time and studio influence to get it done. As an index of how confusing it ultimately was, I only know that it didn’t work for me but am unable to really articulate why. It felt like a totally self-indulgent masturbatory fantasy and maybe therein lies the problem. It seemed as though there was too much information, but not about Bobby Darin so much as Kevin Spacey. At various times, when doing Darin performing, I felt like I was being given a glimpse into the young Kevin Spacey’s bedroom, where he would spin, twirl and snap his fingers while mouthing the words to a Darin song in the mirror – not a place I really wanted to be.