Opinion An eternal one night stand

The film shows the first day of rehearsals,when Taylor is late,of course,and Burton is aghast to learn that his former wife hasn’t actually read the play. “I always make it a rule never to look at anything until I’m starring in it,” she pertly explains. It’s quickly evident that the two stars still have chemistry,yet very different reasons for wanting to work together again. Burton,still insecure about his standing as an actor,wants a co-star. Taylor,lonely and drinking heavily,wants a playmate. He is on the wagon,shakily. She is in a pre-Betty Ford clinic frenzy,drinking full-throttle. Inevitably,their ambitions clash.

And,in that sense,Burton and Taylor is instructive about how to make a movie about outsize movie stars. Burton and Taylor is woven around just one almost forgotten episode in the stars’ long and improbable story. In that sense,the film is a little like a Peter Morgan conceit: two characters collide at a critical juncture in modern history,like Queen Elizabeth II and Tony Blair around the time of the death of Diana,Princess of Wales,or Richard M. Nixon and David Frost in the aftermath of Watergate. Here,Taylor and Burton spar in the twilight of their own mystique.

It helps that Bonham Carter and West are instantly believable and likeable in the roles,even though neither one closely resembles the original. Bonham Carter doesn’t have Taylor’s violet eyes or movie-star magnetism,but she conveys the actress’s bawdy bad manners and capricious charm. West can do Burton’s famous voice as well as capture his intelligence and vulnerability. Burton was a highly respected Shakespearean actor who felt he lost a chance at greatness by becoming a movie star. In the film,Burton rather poignantly says that all he really wants to do is King Lear. He never got a chance: he died,at 58,in 1984,before he had the chance. Taylor was 79 when she died in 2011.

In this interpretation,Taylor doesn’t necessarily expect to win Burton back — he has a new girlfriend — but she wants to re-establish her primacy in his life. Burton feels pity and also enduring affection,but mostly fears that he will drown in her drinking.

And each,when thwarted,knows best how to wound the other. When Burton resists her advances and instead tries to give her acting notes,Taylor falls conveniently ill and lets a stand-in take her place at his side. The theatre empties almost immediately. The producers close the show until Taylor returns. While the play is on hiatus,Burton runs off to Las Vegas for his fifth marriage,to Sally Hay. Taylor learns about it from the newspapers. Taylor has plunged the knife into what matters most to Burton,his reputation. And he has retaliated just as brutally,stoking Taylor’s worst fear,that she can be replaced.

But the ex-lovers are too entwined to stay hostile for long,their memories too vivid — and carnal — to fade away entirely. Burton and Taylor distils the special pleasure those ageing movie stars could still take in each other’s company long after their passion was spent.

Alessandra Stanley