REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Famous lawyer Alan Dershowitz defends Claus von Bulow in this adaptation of Dershowitz's book. While none of the characters is anyone you would really want to know or even deal with, some of the re-assessment of what appears initially to be an "open and shut" case is reminiscent of TWELVE ANGRY MEN. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4).
There is an old exchange where one person says, "The rich are different from us." And the other person responds, "Yes, they have more money." REVERSAL OF FORTUNE gives us glimpses into quite a few things but one is the lifestyles of the very rich. What we see is less than totally inviting. In REVERSAL OF FORTUNE our first impressions of Claus von Bulow play off all our prejudices against the European aristocracy. He is cultured, cold, emotionless, and calculating. He seems a marble statue that has been granted the power of speech. In a sense he is the damsel-in-distress of this piece. As the film begins he has already been found guilty of the attempted murder of his wife Sunny. To avoid going to prison he gets trial lawyer and professor of law Alan Dershowitz to defend him. Of course, as a matter of record Dershowitz did successfully appeal the conviction and in a retrial had von Bulow acquitted of the charges. REVERSAL OF FORTUNE, based on Dershowitz's own book, is the story of how Alan Dershowitz defended the impassive Claus von Bulow.
The film also gives us a view into Dershowitz's unorthodox defense procedures. He turns his house into a workshop with teams in each room researching the legal ramifications of a different piece of evidence against von Bulow. The teams even have sweatshirts labeled with the piece of evidence they are working on. Dershowitz may be bragging about the completeness of his approach but, in fact, one may wonder at the fairness of expending this magnitude of resource in a legal action. Dershowitz moralizes why he should take the case even if von Bulow is so likely guilty, but the audience never works up the respect for him and his methods that it has for the dramatized Clarence Darrow in INHERIT THE WIND or the dramatized Louis Nizer in A CASE OF LIBEL. His causes are not so noble and his fees are higher. As unflattering as this film was to Claus, whose only moments of humanity seem to be when he is having fun with his own ghoulish image in the press, REVERSAL OF FORTUNE is far less flattering to Sunny. This daughter of the idle rich is shown to have been mostly dead already by his own actions. She is totally idle and self-indulgent. Her hours out of bed, which number only six a day, are a constant struggle to pass through he system every drug she can lay her shaking hands on. Regardless of anything Claus did, we are led to believe that death or near-death was the expected and logical result of an incredibly self-destructive lifestyle. If she was really as portrayed, one wonders how she survived as long as she did.
In addition to Dershowitz's moralizing, there is one more piece of moralizing that is irritating in the film. The film pokes fun at von Bulow's patronizing, if well-intentioned, attitude toward Dershowitz being Jewish. Yet several times the camera takes opportunities to remind us that Dershowitz is not just a lawyer, he is a JEWISH lawyer. Camera angles are chosen to show a painting on a Jewish theme in Dershowitz's office or to show a menorah in his home. The camera is just as hung up on religion as is von Bulow.
Of the three stars, Glenn Close as Sunny von Bulow has top billing and got the least screen time. She does, however, narrate the story in spite of the fact that it makes little sense to have a narrator who is speaking from a coma and who was less than a clear thinker even before her coma. Some attention has been paid to Jeremy Irons's performance as Claus, though I have always thought it is easier to be convincingly weird than to be convincingly normal.
On the whole, REVERSAL OF FORTUNE panders a bit too much to the fans of crime "docudramas." But it is told with wit and subtlety. I would give it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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