I tend to refrain from blogging about every movie that I
watch, since I operate under the assumption that no one particularly cares what
I think about movies (or anything, for that matter). However, I wanted to write
about Albert Nobbs, a strange little
period piece I recently saw on DVD, for the simple reason that I’d like to
remember how it made me feel.
I won’t say unequivocally that I enjoyed this film; rather,
it made a forceful impression. It stuck with me, so to speak. It had quite a
few flaws, and it fell short in many ways. I suppose it frustrated me for all
its unrealized potential and self-consciousness about wanting to avoid the
tacky gender-bender stereotype, but it was also oddly touching in a way that I
never expected.
Albert Nobbs is
set in socially conservative 19th century Ireland, when women were
either sheltered to the extreme or left to fend for themselves as best as they
could, depending on their socioeconomic status. The eponymous character, played
by a shockingly convincing Glenn Close, is ostensibly a waiter in an upscale Dublin
hotel catering to the badly behaved super-rich. As a waiter, Albert is
efficient, punctual, meticulous, and discreet. As a man, he is reserved and
taciturn, somewhat of an enigma to the other members of the hotel’s staff. When
Albert is forced to share a room for one night with a migrant laborer named Mr.
Page, we and his new roommate discover that Albert is actually a woman
(surprise!). Luckily for Albert, crisis is averted by the revelation that the
new confidant is also a woman disguised as a man, which leads to a shared bond
of trust and much commiserating over the complications of living as the
opposite gender. Upon learning that Mr. Page is married to a woman,
Albert decides that, if Mr. Page can do it, Albert can also find a wife to
assuage his loneliness. He designates a maid named Helen—who already has an
alcoholic boyfriend named Joe--as the object of his affection, and proceeds to
court her. This courting is to the severe detriment of Albert’s hard-earned
savings, as Joe and Helen have devised a plain to exploit Albert’s solicitations
in order to fund their journey to America. Meanwhile, Albert is busy striving
to make his fantasy of operating his own tobacco shop, with Helen at his side,
a reality. Things start to go awry when Joe gets Helen pregnant. Albert
recognizes that Joe is a hit-it-and-quit-it sort of lad, and tries to warn
Helen, but Helen overtly rejects Albert. Helen reports back to Joe, who
drunkenly starts a fight, prompting Albert to intervene in Helen’s defense.
Albert gets his head knocked against a wall for his trouble. At some point
during the kerfuffle, Albert quietly returns to his bedroom and is found dead
in his bed the next morning, presumably of an intracranial bleed. Soon after
Albert’s death, Mr. Page returns to the hotel to find that Helen and her baby
have been abandoned by Joe, just as Albert predicted. The movie ends
ambiguously with Mr. Page, now a widower, implying that he will look after
Helen as a sort of homage to Albert.
Critics have unanimously agreed that the strength of the
film originates from the performances of the actors, particularly Glenn Close,
and not from the plot. I don’t necessarily agree. I thought the story had a lot
of potential as a study in becoming what we despise as a means to avert
rejection and failure. Albert, who was the illegitimate child of a mother with
some means, was cast out on to the street after the death of her mother and
subsequently raped by a group of strangers.
In order to survive, she dressed as a boy and found work as a waiter,
rather than continue to be vulnerable as a girl with no family and no
prospects. However, she continued to live as a man for thirty years, which suggests that she eventually began to
self-identify as Albert Nobbs. Albert, traumatized by rejection and shame, is essentially hiding from himself, creating a new life in which he is able to protect and provide for someone the way that nobody had ever done for him. Similarly, Albert’s competition for Helen’s
affections is a handsome bad boy with an abusive, alcoholic father he loathes.
He appears to have every intention of doing right by Helen and marrying her,
but in the end, his demons win the battle and he continues his father’s legacy,
becoming a violent drunk who shirks his responsibilities. Joe, like Albert,
inadvertently transforms into that which he had vilified. I think this theme
could have been explored more thoroughly, as it's a rather intriguing notion that rings true to life.
It almost goes without saying that Glenn Close gave a truly
outstanding performance as Albert. It can’t have been easy to play a woman
playing a man—particularly with a common sort of British accent—but Close
positively transformed into the character and gave Albert an awkward
vulnerability that was mesmerizing to observe. I was astounded to learn that
Close didn’t win an Academy Award for this remarkable performance. The lovely
man-boy who played Joe also delivered a delightfully subtle turn, at once
aggressively masculine and irreverently boyish. This movie boasts some
genuinely solid actors and actresses that make Albert’s trials feel
extraordinarily personal.
At the end of the day, I have no idea what to feel about Albert Nobbs. It was just uncomfortable
enough to inspire me to ponder it weeks after watching the film, without being
so uncomfortable to make me say, “What the F did I just watch?” (I’m talking
about you there, A History of Violence.)
I was certainly left wanting to know more about Albert; I felt that his abrupt
death was unsatisfying and anticlimactic. I definitely felt a sense of emotional dry
heaving with this film. There was something wanting to get out, but never quite
yielded the catharsis that I expected.
