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Monday, February 24, 2020

Judy (2019)

Renee Zellweger's performance in this painful depiction of the end of Judy Garland's life won her a Best Actress Academy Award.  In the movie she is singing her heart out, baring her bruised soul, and acting with a ferocity that offers a window into what might have happened at the end of Garland's short and storied life. 
The movie largely relies on the audience knowing something about Garland's rise to stardom and her subsequent fall from grace.  There are flashbacks to when she was 16 years old and playing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  The director had a creepy feel to him and the woman hired to en loco parentis her is feeding her stimulants to stay thin and sedatives to sleep--a habit that persists throughout her adult life.  It is easy to see why she might have been unhappy, with abject adoration from fans that ultimately move on to another star and an inability to participate in a marriage or to parent her children.  She just couldn't cope and in the end, she died young.

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