Fangor1a got some cast and director comments on the upcoming release of Dorian Gray:
Toby Finlaym scriptwriter states: “It’s a timeless story with a great deal of contemporary currency regarding the desire to halt the aging process, the pursuit of pleasure and the obsession with celebrity culture."
“What interested me most was the clash between the decadent Victorian ways of old and the modern Edwardian era just around the corner. Wilde really had written the first draft of American Psycho!" Finlay comments. "I wanted to tap into those psychosexual aspects, making the mysterious picture not just an object but also something Dorian carries around inside him.""The time frames have been exaggerated,” Barnes describes about his role. “My character leaves London for 25 years, but then arrives back literally in the next shot completely unchanged while everyone else around him has aged. It’s then that he meets Emily, the daughter of his mentor Lord Henry Wotton, the one new character addition to our story. But he doesn’t exploit Emily. Despite Henry’s fears, Dorian shows his humanity instead, making it a triangular, stake-raising moral dilemma.”
“The story is just so irresistible, isn’t it?” Colin Firth adds. “I was shocked by how many film and television versions there have been, so people clearly feel compelled to dramatize the issues at its heart. I wanted to be in the movie after reading Toby’s script, because my character, Lord Henry, actually has an arc to play, whereas the book contains no journey or conflict. The ‘sins of the father’ aspect coming home to roost regarding his daughter was something I could sink my teeth into, not just standing around pretty period sets spouting famous Wilde lines.”
Director Oliver Parker had already made Wilde adaptations—An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest (another Firth film). “That’s one of the reasons I was only down to executive-produce for Ealing Studios at first,” he states. “I felt I’d paid my Wilde dues, but then I read Toby’s final screenplay and was knocked out by his accent on the story’s humanity, pathos and subtle chills. The quotable dialogue is just a background to a richly textured nightmare world Toby had visualized. How to make the standard drawing-room stuff frightening, the debauchery shocking and the radical reinterpretation of the picture in the attic as a whole new monster was a terrific challenge."
Fans must wait until September 11, 2009 for the UK release. US release date has not been posted.
Source: Fangor1a.
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