Rating of
2/4
"Pleasure is not the same thing as happiness!"
MovieAddict - wrote on 09/26/12
'Dorian Gray' follows the story of a young English bureaucrat whose blind pursuit of hedonism lands him into a world of supernatural trouble when he makes a deal with the devil to trade his soul for eternal youth and beauty. However, like always, with every wish there's a drawback. For Dorian; this drawback comes in the form of his portrait, painted by his friend Basil (Ben Chaplin). Dorian finds that he never ages and remains ever-youthful, whereas the marks of ageing start to appear on the portrait and reflects the vicious, soulless man he has become. He ends up moving the portrait from his hallway to a locked secret room in his attic.
With his dark hair and impossibly black eyes Ben Barnes was believable as Dorian morphing from naive and innocent to seductive and sinful. Colin Firth plays Lord Henry Wotten, Gray's mentor in degeneracy, who convinces Dorian that the only way to avoid being pressured by one's vices is to give into them. But when Dorian begins a romance with Henry's daughter Emily, Lord Henry violently objects. There is something of a lesson to be learned here, but I'm not entirely sure what it is. Don't mess with the devil? Treat your friends fairly? Don’t fall in love. Perhaps it is a little bit of all.
I finish with my favorite quote from the film, "Conscience? It's just a polite word for cowardice."
