If you ever want to be an actor, my advice is to get a copy (digital or physical) of Reversal of Fortune and study it. Jeremy Irons was only in his early 40s when he played Claus von Bulow (who was about 15 years older) but you wouldn’t have guessed it. With a little bit of make-up and a comb over, he looks older. But looking older is just part of the performance. Anyone can look older. Every mannerism he does evokes Claus. How he walks, talks, holds a cigarette or even a utensil at the dinner table seems to be one of those carefully thought out ways of making us question who exactly is this man.
The beauty part of how director Barbet Schroeder and writer Nicholas Kazan structure this movie is like a cross between Rashomon, The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Twelve Angry Men. I wouldn’t really call it a legal thriller, as there is a small fraction of the 111 minutes on scene taking place inside a courtroom. I would say the opening helicopter shot of the outrageously luxurious mansions on the shores of Newport, R.I. and the end credits together are much longer than the two short scenes that take place in a court room. Filmmaker Brian DePalma was no fan of courtroom scenes as he said it reminded him of Perry Mason.
The beginning of the movie begins as Sunny von Bulow (Glenn Close), lies in a hospital bed in a healthcare facility room. In a voice-over narration, she talks about the mystery surrounding two incidents that occurred about a year before both around Christmastime. The first one was Dec. 26, 1979 when she was discovered unresponsive in her own bed and had slipped several hours before regaining consciousness. The second one was on Dec. 21, 1980 when she was discovered by Claus in her own private bathroom, adjacent to their bathroom.
The biggest mystery is why would Claus have lied awake in the bed next to Sunny for hours without notifying anyone. Sunny had reportedly wet the bed. Surely, he must have smelt something or sensed something was abnormal. But we didn’t fully understand their marriage. The second time at their place Clarendon Court, Claus didn’t even notify an ambulance or the servants but only his stepson. Sunny had been found lying face down with her nightgown hiked up over her waist. Surely, everything would seem suspect to anyone who’s ever watched a Dateline, 20/20 or any true-crime show.
Well, not exactly. As Claus tells his appellate lawyer, Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) later in the movie, there was a lot of things about their relationship and marriage that people might not understand. Following the 1979 incident, Sunny had been diagnosed as hypoglycemic. However, she had a tendency to drink too much alcoholic beverages and indulge in sweets rarely eating anything else. Sunny was rich by the time she was 3, inheriting her father’s massive $100 million fortune (which is about $2.37 billion by today’s standards and over $600,000 by 1980), she probably had the richest and most expensive desserts. Their lifestyle probably wouldn’t seem typical to anyone, even in Rhode Island where Claus was convicted of attempted murder by a jury of his peers. But the only people in Rhode Island who could understand how the Danish-born British lawyer lived would never sit on a jury because they would have too much money and too much political power to be rightfully excused.
It’s the opposite of the Affluenza Defense. Claus had been an aide to J. Paul Getty of British Petroleum and Sunny at the time had seen her net worth dwindled to only $75 million. It was still a lot of money for the mid-1960s. Claus only had about a net worth of $1 million. However, he would have received $14 million in the event of Sunny’s death. To a lot of people, that’s 14 million reasons to make it look like Sunny, who was 48 at the time of the 1980 incident, had a serious health emergency. Claus said that Sunny hated doctors and ambulances and since she was still breathing, that’s why Claus didn’t call for an ambulance.
Oh, he was also having an affair with actress Alexandra Isles (Julie Hagerty) who would go on to testify against him in the trial. But Dershowitz, who doesn’t want to know if Claus is innocent or not, is upset over how Sunny’s family hired a private investigator before pursuing criminal charges. The private investigator, a formal prosecutor, had gathered evidence without a legal warrant and they had found a vial of insulin and a syringe with insulin crusted on the needle. But Dershowitz wants to question all this evidence as well as statements taken by the servants at the house might have been misunderstood or taken out of context.
Is Claus guilty or innocent? It’s not known. And Irons never leads it on either way. In one scene, he seems sincere that he’s been framed. In another, he acts as if he knows he’s going to beat the system. He never really does show much emotion that’s too extravagant or outrageous. The way he summons his stepson with a slight hand gesture as he just needs to tell him something normal says a lot, especially since Sunny is lying face down feet away.
When Claus and Dershowitz meet at a fancy New York City restaurant, a waiter calls Claus “Dr. von Bulow” which he takes with a bit disdain but it’s clearly a joke he’s heard before. But he comments that the popularity of the trial allowed them to get a great seat and reservation at the restaurant. Claus has already found a new girlfriend, Andrea Reynolds (Christine Baranski), as they live in property that belongs to Sunny. On paper, Claus is still married to Sunny. And doctors have diagnosed that she is in a persistent vegetative state to the brain injury she sustained, meaning she will never regain consciousness. (The real life Sunny, who was born Martha Sharp Crawford passed away on Dec. 6, 2008 at the age of 76 spending the last 28 years of her life in a coma.)
Through his research and investigation, Dershowitz assembles law students including one played by a young Felicity Huffman, a former romantic partner, Sarah (Annabella Sciorra), lawyers, Peter MacIntosh (Jack Gilpin), and his own son, Elon (Stephen Mailer), to thoroughly research and examine every angle of the case from false positives of the syringe to using Rhode Island’s own legal precedents against the appellate court who may have already made up their own mind. Dershowitz and his team present so much reasonable doubt and circumstantial evidence that it’s impossible to prove that Claus is guilty but also that he is innocent. Claus got convicted because the public saw a cheating husband but not that they couldn’t understand the complexity of their lifestyle.
With the exception of scenes of her in a coma, almost all of Close’s scenes are in flashback told by Claus, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Some might say Sunny is portrayed as a nagging stuck-up woman. Yet, I think it’s an accurate portrayal of the last era of the socialite aristocrats. During the 1980s, the public opinion would change concerning people like the von Bulows. Wealth inequality began to widen and lesser people were romanticizing people like this. Sunny is mostly shown indoors which Schroeder and the film crew show as bland and dreary. Her outrageous wealth had made her a prisoner in her own home.
And the divide between her and Claus was growing wider on the morning of Dec. 21, 1980. Claus was awoken as usual from the dogs who he took outside to walk along their beach. Then he went to a routine of exercising, showering in his own bathroom and making some important phone calls in the morning. Sunny, he said, could spend hours in the bathroom. She had also been spending hours in the bed. It didn’t help matters that she insisted the windows be opened making it extremely cold. There’s also fact that that a high amount aspirin was found in her system.
Dershowitz, Sarah and Elon theorize that Sunny may have tried to commit suicide as her and Claus had gotten into an argument the day before and it looked like they were going to separate. Alexandra had dropped off some love letters Claus had written her of which Sunny had seen and read. At 48, Sunny was about to be divorced twice and women didn’t get divorced twice at this age in the early 1980s.
And that’s what’s so great about this movie. It doesn’t really pick a side. Irons’ knows just how to portray Claus as a man who knew not to show much emotion because of the way he was brought up. And for that, people saw a cold-blooded killer. And he might just as well have been. Dershowitz is able to get the first conviction overturned and Sunny’s narration saying he was tried a second time and acquitted. The final scene has Claus buying cigarettes at a pharmacy while a clerk notices he’s on the front page of the newspapers at which he jokes with her that he also needs a vial of insulin. But he tells her he’s just kidding and gives her a wink and a little smile as she remains perplexed.
I think Irons approached the role as someone who may be guilty and may be innocent. Yet, he wasn’t sure exactly how to play it in each scene. Prior to this movie, he was in Dead Ringers where he had play twin brothers who were gynecologists in Toronto. He had requested two dressing rooms, one each for whichever brother he was playing that day. But then he realized the purpose of the movie was to not understand which was which. I’d say Claus is like the duality of those two characters wrapped into one. He shows how some people might be intrigued by him but also be scared of him including the law students who are supposed to be working for him.
Knowing now what we know about Dershowitz and Jeffrey Epstein, it’s harder to watch this movie without cringing a little. I mean, Dershowitz was also on O.J. Simpson’s defense team. Silver has the harder job by making Dershowitz the audience’s eyes into the case. But his role as a lawyer is not to be sympathetic or relatable. His goal is to defend his client even if he’s guilty as sin.
Irons won a much deserved Oscar for his performance and Schroeder was nominated for Best Director. The movie made Irons more of a mainstream actor where he would cleverly use the line “You have no idea” later when he voiced Scar in the 1994 The Lion King. However, a decision to make a new version of Lolita led to controversy as the movie went unreleased for years. Then, he followed by a string of bombs, including that Dungeons & Dragons movie, which hurt his career. But how do you top a role like this. You really can’t. He’s continued to work appearing in Elizabeth I, as Alfred Pennyworth in the DCEU, and on TV as Adrien Viedt in Watchmen. Yet, this one is his crowning achievement.
Considering that Huffman is in the movie and Dershowitz is a main character, it’s hard to watch it without laughing a little at the hypocrisy. But as Dershowitz tells her character, if lawyers only defended innocent people, they’d only be about 10 lawyers in the country.
What do you think? Please comment.