As long as I can remember, I've been a massive fan of stand-up comedy. I think that these days there are very few comedians who are worth their weight, but the joy of watching the few who are is almost unparalleled. It's no secret that Lenny Bruce changed the face of stand-up, becoming a pioneer for such contemporaries as Louis C.K. and Bill Burr, my two favorite comedians. Bruce came into a world that was scared to speak the truth, scared to laugh at the absurdity of human behavior and he held up a mirror to the world and said, "Look at yourself, aren't you ridiculous?".
For it's time, the idea of doing this was shocking and wildly controversial. People saw him as vulgar and offensive, when he was really just speaking the truth that people were afraid to here. He evolved the game and it's only fair that an actor like Dustin Hoffman, a fellow pioneer of his career field, was selected to portray Bruce in this stark and honest biographic tale. My general stance towards Hollywood biopics is that I'm strongly against them, believing that to condense the life of a human being into a two or three hour film is impossible, but the script here by Julian Barry, adapting from his own play, does a strong job of taking the important parts of Bruce's life and leaving the rest behind.
Unfortunately it does fall into a lazy trap of this genre, using a structure that functions around post-death interviews with those closest to Bruce in order to tell the story of his rise and fall. What's interesting though is that it doesn't play it straight in the sense of going back and forth between post-death and the chronological rise of Bruce; it does do this, but it also throws in another period, Bruce's last routine on stage. This adds an interesting twist onto this worn out structure and makes watching his rise even more intriguing to witness.
We see him on stage, miraculously portrayed by Hoffman, with a full beard, exhausted expression and a wild, kinetic energy; a refusal to give up and sit down, an almost desperate need to get out all of the words he needs to say before he is stopped again. Bruce is almost a protester here, grabbing his microphone and shouting towards anyone who will listen to understand the crimes against humanity that are being permitted every day. Seeing him in this state makes it even more interesting to see where he began, as we now must wonder what happens to turn the nebbish and soft Bruce we meet in his earliest time period into the biting and confident man he will later become.
Bob Fosse directs it all with his own unique flare, and some razor-sharp editing keeps things feeling fresh and as kinetic as the man the whole thing is based around. I also want to mention the cinematography, which is honestly some of the best I've ever come across. It's presented in black and white, which was a wonderful idea to match Bruce's style as a performer, and the way that the shots are composed and lit is a visual orgasm in every way. This is one of those films that I wanted to pause every five seconds just to marvel at the way it was shot, but I couldn't allow myself to step away from seeing more of Bruce.
Everyone in the cast and crew do marvelous work here, but there's no denying that the film belongs to one man and that man is Dustin Hoffman. His performance is one of titanic proportions here, a slow-burn of pure genius, bringing Bruce along that evolutionary path to the man we know he will one day become. Lenny Bruce goes through many stages before he becomes the comedic icon that we initially see, and Hoffman plays them all with an absorbed authenticity that is purely magical. Looking back in time we see when he first meets his future wife Honey, and the utter bliss and childish joy on his face would be beautiful if it wasn't so heartbreaking knowing what he will eventually become.
It's in the later stages that Hoffman truly lifts off though, when Bruce is in and out of prison and struggling with a drug addiction. Bruce becomes a bastion for free speech and social commentary, but more the film presents him as something more human than that; a flawed creature who for all of his evolutionary changes to media was also a very broken man within himself. There is a scene where Bruce does a routine wearing nothing but a raincoat and one sock, while he's riding high on drugs, that might just be the finest piece of acting I've seen my entire life.
The scene is about ten minutes long, but it feels like it lasts an eternity. Normally this would be a complaint, but here it couldn't be a stronger compliment, as Hoffman takes us through this horrific state that the man is in at the time. With his lapses in silence, his rambling dialogues and his stop and start speech patterns, it's like watching a train wreck that you can't stare away from and you just keep hoping will be over soon. You want it to stop but you know that you aren't going to look away until it does.
This colossal feat of acting would be impressive on it's own, but the fact that Hoffman does all of it in one take makes it something truly out of this world. It's a performance that stands at the very top of the all-time greats, in a film that is as brutally honest towards Lenny Bruce as he was towards the rest of the world.
