Searching for something to watch this last weekend, I stumbled upon a movie that loomed large in my mind as a kid while, when it premiered, it was pretty much derided by critics and audiences. It just so happens that the Spring of 1995 was when I was falling in love with both film and music. I had always loved movies, but I was developing a deeper appreciation of them, and I had contemporaneously been pulled into the world of Latin music. Then came Jeremy Leven’s Don Juan DeMarco, a shamelessly romantic comedy with a fabulous, Latin-tinged score by the late, underrated tunesmith Michael Kamen (who co-wrote Bryan Adams’ “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” for the film). Quite simply: I fell in love.
It’s okay to talk favorably about Johnny Depp now, isn’t it? Well, regardless, Depp is a serious craftsman despite his persona in popular culture today. While I’ve not been a fan of most of the films he’s done in the 21st century, his early collaborations with Tim Burton revealed to the world a serious and fine actor. The 1990s saw Depp acquiring his sea-legs in difficult parts that allowed him to still be a matinee idol while showing the rest of us, he did, in fact, know what he was doing. He had something of the great American film actors in him, including Marlon Brando who had to do nothing but listen to his fellow actors onscreen and yet, you were drawn to him—couldn’t take your eyes off him, in fact. There is still no finer American actor to hone his craft on film quite like Brando.
So, when Depp was offered Don Juan DeMarco, he accepted on the condition that Brando play the stymied, secretly romantic psychiatrist who treats a young man with suicidal tendencies who delusionally believes he is Don Juan (the character having been made famous in a play by Moliere, an epic poem by Lord Byron, and an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). The film begins with you believing this young man actually might be Don Juan except walking around in the wrong century. At a hotel (where Selena is singing!), Don Juan embarks on a final sexual conquest before swearing to end his life.
On top of the building where Depp is threatening his demise, Brando’s character is genie-lifted and plays into the delusion by introducing himself as Don Octavio de Silva, a Spanish nobleman who invites Don Juan to his villa (in fact a psychiatric hospital). It just so happens that Dr. Mickler retires in ten days and Don Juan is to be committed for ten days and be his final patient. He keeps the Casanova-in-training off medication while he soaks up the Don Juan mythology and tries to deal with the fact that, on the one hand, he believes the young man to be Don Juan and, on the other, it can’t possibly be the case.
Nevertheless, Brando’s turgid professional and love life are awakened to new scents and flavors as he hears the story of this Don Juan, who claims to be the child of an Italian American father and Mexican mother whose honor he avenged in a duel that leaves his father dead. He is accidentally sold into slavery (where he becomes the world’s most famous lover with a Sultan’s harem) and then falls in love with Dona Aña, the true object of his heart. Part of the hospital staff is partially carried away by the patient’s magnetism and the other half are having none of it. Additionally, Brando meets the boy’s grandmother who parries the story with a more realistic version and his mother, who seems to back the legend.
In the end, Brando’s character reconnects with his wife and find his romantic side again as Depp agrees to finally be medicated. When the judge comes to evaluate him, he tells a story along the lines his grandmother laid out: he is an impressionable young man, never good with women, who falls in love with a centerfold and dripped into delusion. Whether he is telling the truth as Don Juan or, in the penultimate scene with the judge, is left to the viewer though the clever, cheeky ending argues both the reality and the romantic story can exist in the same universe.
Anchoring the film is Faye Dunaway, a true professional, who plays Brando’s wife in a role that could easily be a throwaway part. Bob Dishy has some great scenes as the hospital administrator. But the stars are clearly Brando and Depp. I would argue it is Brando’s last great performance. Again, it is not just when he is acting, but when he is simply listening and soaking up the romance just like the audience, he is most terrific. Depp may have gone a little too method with the Castilian accent that makes some of the voice-over hard to hear, but otherwise, holds his own.
Nevertheless, when it premiered, DeMarco was hailed as either charming but pointless or a springtime zest that was sweet but could have been better. I found myself equally enamored of the film on Sunday as I was as a child. In fact, I understood it more and allowed the romance to wash over me all over again. What makes the whole thing work, even with its lapses in continuity, are the three central performances and a script that is witty and breezy. At one point, the film was performed as a musical with a book by Craig Lucas and though it never reached New York, one can see why it would make a good musical property.
So, if you are not a die-hard empiricist, and can enjoy a little romance and adventure, watch Don Juan DeMarco and enjoy three of America’s finest film actors wallowing in love, buoyancy, and joy.
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