This 2009 film starring Ben Barnes and Colin Firth is a fairly pedestrian retelling of the famous Oscar Wilde tale, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray.’ I say ‘pedestrian’ because, while watchable, I wouldn’t say there is anything particularly innovative about the way it is done or the way the story is told. The publicity made quite a lot of the special effects, but in fact I was not impressed by that either. The effects were pretty obvious much of the time, whereas good CGI should be inconspicuous. On the other hand, not much harm was done by them either. They were just similar in quality to the rest of the film. Colin Firth stood out as playing the most interesting character in the story, Lord Henry Wotton, who corrupts young Dorian, and he did his job well.

For those of you unfamiliar with the basic story, Dorian inherits a fortune, and falls in with wealthy people of a basically amoral character – Lord Henry Wotton, an intellectual, and Basil Hallward (Ben Chapman), a painter. They take Dorian out for a drink in seedy Whitechapel, and between being propositioned by prostitutes in the pub, Lord Henry essentially sums up the question the film is asking. He says, “There’s no shame in pleasure, Mr Gray. You see, man just wants to be happy, but society wants him to be good and when he’s good man is rarely happy and when he’s happy he’s always good.” Dorian asks him about the price on one’s soul for such behavour and the question is answered with a drink to the devil, in effect. Henry says, “Everything is possible for you because you have the only two things worth having: youth, and beauty.” Shortly afterwards, he adds, as Dorian misses out on talking to an attractive young woman, “People die of common sense, Dorian: one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment: there is no hereafter. So make it burn – always – with the hardest flame.” Back at his house, Basil has finished a portrait he has been painting of Dorian. On seeing it, Henry points out that the painting will always stay the same, but Dorian will grow old and die. Dorian abhors this fate and asks that it doesn’t happen to him. Lord Henry quickly incants a spell as if reciting from a piece of literature and asks Dorian if he would really want this… Dorian says, “Yes,” and the spell is cast. The painting takes on all his infirmity, all his evil, all his venereal disease even, and he stays young for the rest of the film as others age around him. He lives the life of a rake, having any women (or men) he pleases, with no physical consequences for him, however much harm it does to others. He murders to hide his secret, and gets away with it… and while he stays the same, the painting becomes uglier and uglier as it shows the real Dorian…

So in a way, the film is asking, is beauty a more important virtue than goodness? This is a very relevant question in today’s world of commercialised prostitutes-as-stars, where appearance is everything. And, interestingly, in the film, the women Dorian seduced, on the whole, were rather plain by modern cinematic standards, perhaps to underline this point: they were real people, being used and hurt by him, not fashion icons with no fundamental reality.

The attribute of beauty in the modern age has been at once exploited in the world of the mass media, and at the same time ignored in society in general: our buildings, for example, are no longer designed with the idea of ‘beauty’ in mind, as many were in a former age (Dorian Gray’s Victorian times, for example). Today, functionality is all. The same is true for, say, furniture. Much of what is available in the shops, in the way of products in general indeed, is functional but ugly. One could argue that modern products like iphones and imacs have some beauty about their design, and they do look nice – but slick and modern and minimalistic is only one sort of beauty – and it is strictly commercial. Beauty is being used to advertise and promote products, including film & TV ‘personalities’ (LOL) and even presidents and prime ministers, arguably, but not for iteslf. Beauty too is just functional in the modern world.

The film also asks, is happiness more important than pleasure: is the pleasure-ridden life of a rake actually worth it? Does it make Dorian happy in the end? Well, of course not. I suppose I don’t need to say any more about that: you can watch the film to see how it turns out.

So that’s the philosoply, how about the film??? Well, nothing special, and I would add, a little long. The story is told, certainly. I just feel it could have been told better. Some of the ideas in the film are just too simple-minded. For example, the way the picture changes and animates gets more and more laughable but if you can suspend your disbelief you can probably survive to the end. As a film, I would say that it does answer the questions it sets out to ask, as described above, but I would still only score it maybe 5/10, but since it raises some interesting philosophical questions about modern life, and as Oscar Wilde certainly wrote a cracking good story, 6/10 overall: watchable, but only just.