Tom Jones (1963)
Written by John Osborne
Directed by Tony Richardson
I don’t believe in coincidence.
I know that that seems like a weird thing to not believe in. But, I don’t. I believe in fate. Destiny. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. Give me enough time, and I can talk your ear off about the balance between fate and choice.
I bring this up because less than a week after I watched the next film on this Best Picture list, 1963’s Tom Jones, it’s star, Albert Finney, passed away. Many people would attribute this to coincidence, but to me, I see it as something more. For whatever reason, I was meant to watch this film when I did, and to not be able to write my review until now, over a week after watching the film.
Albert Finney as the titular Tom Jones
I’ll be honest, and admit that my biggest exposure to Albert Finney is 1982’s Annie, where he played Daddy Warbucks, setting a new high bar for the role. I had also seen him in Erin Brockovich, but Annie remains the performance I know him best for. He isn’t bad here in Tom Jones; his performance matches, stylistically, the rest of the film. The film itself, however, is a bit more bizarre.
Tom Jones is a comedy, a rarity on this list. The problem with the film is, that in its quest to be funny, it tries to be too many things, leaving the film as an extremely weird mishmash of styles and plots.
The film starts with a silent-film style of opening, which I was really excited about, but that conceit was dropped pretty quickly. It’s established early here that the plot is going to border on non-sensical. Following the title character around, as he has adventures, the film is narrated in a style that reminded me of Amélie. It also features a lot of breaking of the fourth wall, but, with all of this...why? There’s a lot of comedic threads that just aren’t followed. It’s a parody of silent films. The humor is in the narration. It’s Monty Python-esque. The film can’t seem to decide just where it wants its comedy to come from, and therefore doesn’t really commit to any of them.
From a filmmaking perspective, it’s not great, either. The editing is INCREDIBLY abrupt, and there are sequences that feel like, visually, they could have come out of The Blair Witch Project. There are other sequences where the film is played at high speed (in an attempt to make it funnier?); all of these combine to produce a film that doesn’t seem to be sure of itself.
A great example of what I was NOT doing during this movie
Apparently, this is exactly what happened, as the production team felt everything was going great, until the post-production process, where director Tony Richardson began losing his way in the process, and probably began to fail at seeing the big picture while focusing on the details.
Overall, I find it really easy to nitpick this film, because even though it isn’t BAD, it’s just not good, either. The lead performance notwithstanding, the film is kind of a dumpster fire, with everything being thrown in, and nothing truly memorable being left behind.
FINAL GRADE: D+
