Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang
New York-based freelance journalist/author Lee Israel published three biographies between 1972 and ’85, about actress Tallulah Bankhead, game show contestant Dorothy Kilgallen, and cosmetics maven Estée Lauder. The Kilgallen book earned considerable praise and hit The New York Times Best Sellers list; the Lauder tell-all was an ill-advised money grab that badly damaged Israel’s career, and sent her into an emotional tail-spin.
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| And so it begins: Having realized that a carefully "embellished" letter by a noted literary celebrity is worth more to collectors, Lee (Melissa McCarthy, right) offers just such a doctored document to antiquarian bookseller Anna (Dolly Wells), who reads it delightedly. |
By 1992, 53-year-old Israel was a withdrawn, embittered alcoholic enduring a savage case of writer’s block, with no means of support; she faced eviction from a decaying apartment laden with hundreds (thousands?) of musty books, along with the paper debris and correspondence from a three-decade career.
Her “solution” — the impulsive means by which she kept a roof over her head — remains notorious and controversial to this day.
Director Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is an unflinching account of this later chapter in Israel’s life: an often excruciating depiction of the depths to which self-pity can drive somebody. The grimly mesmerizing saga is fueled by two phenomenal performances, starting with Melissa McCarthy’s fearless portrayal of Israel.
Your raised eyebrows, gentle reader, are unwarranted. McCarthy demonstrated a solid talent for straight drama with her memorable supporting role in 2014’s St. Vincent, and her work here makes good — and then some — on that promise. Frankly, it’s a shame she continues to toil so far beneath her abilities, with low-brow comedy trash such as Tammy, Spy, Heat and pretty much everything else she has done since 2011’s Bridesmaids jump-started her big-screen career.
Actually, comedic stars-turned-serious actors aren’t that uncommon in Hollywood; the roster includes Bill Murray, Emma Thompson, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Steve Carell and quite a few others. No less than Jackie Gleason earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as Minnesota Fats, in 1961’s The Hustler.
Unforgettable dramatic characters often are driven by anguish and disappointment: a desperate state of mind that comedians know all too well. McCarthy is no different, and her persuasive work here frequently transcends the artifice of acting; it’s easy to believe that we’ve somehow stumbled into a means of time-shift voyeurism, and become privy to the actual Lee’s day-by-day exploits.
That’s not merely sensitive direction and accomplished acting, of course; credit also goes to scripters Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, and their note-perfect adaptation of Israel’s fourth and final book, written just six years before her death in 2014. (That memoir’s title shall remain unshared for the moment, since it’s a total spoiler.)
At first blush, there’s nothing sympathetic or appealing about McCarthy’s depiction of Lee. She’s slovenly, unkempt and aggressively rude to strangers and colleagues alike. She has no friends, and it’s frankly amazing that her agent (Jane Curtain, as Marjorie) continues to tolerate the abuse.
It’s difficult to determine whether Lee is clinically depressed or “merely” misanthropic, although the distinction could be telling; the former option might justify a semblance of pity. But McCarthy doesn’t yield; even Lee’s one apparently redeeming quality — a steady devotion to her 12-year-old cat, Jersey — is offset by the squalor in which they exist (the specifics of which, when fully revealed, are a stomach-churning experience).
