Cinema: ‘Being the Ricardos’ The Auto-Generated Sorkin Script
A great script for the wrong story. Being the Ricardos is a well-put together film with skillful writing from Aaron Sorkin. The dialogue is snappy and fast paced, the entire story structure has a clear beginning, middle and end. By the end of the film, all of the characters have been fleshed out and their stories have been told completely. Aaron Sorkin has crafted another great script… but for the wrong source material. Being the Ricardos feels like another Sorkin film and not a Lucille Ball biopic. There is nothing special to a film when it just blends in with a talented writer's past works.
The film is set during a hectic production week of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) reads in a tabloid magazine that her husband, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), is having an affair. At the same time, news breaks that Ball had checked-in a voter registration box many years earlier that she was a communist. She did this in her twenties to appease a beloved uncle (who actually was a communist). This news is especially devastating because it is during the height of the Second Red Scare in America during the 1950’s. With both of these compounding events, Lucille goes into a tailspin where she is trying to find the truth about her husband and trying to stop people from jumping to the conclusion that she is a member of the communist party. This is the main story line, but the narrative is anything but linear. It jumps back in time throughout to show how Lucille and Desi met and how the I Love Lucy show came to be. These flashbacks paint a past and present picture of Lucille Ball's life, though highly dramatized, which is nothing new considering the script is written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. The best way to understand why Being the Ricardos is not a good film, one must first look at Sorkin’s successful writing career.
The screenplays that Sorkin has written in the past are perfect. Before becoming a director of his own works in 2017 with Molly’s Game, he wrote the scripts for movies such as A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network and Moneyball. In each of these films, his plot structure nails character motivation, character development, rising/falling action and a clear ending that wraps up all loose ends. This story structure is supported by well-articulated dialogue that is clear and hard hitting. The best way to describe his dialogue is clean. Sorkin uses dramatic dialogue as a form of characterization. Like a skilled linguist, he understands that how a person talks defines who they are. The way his characters speak and act on screen are big and dramatic because he wants to write a story that is entertaining based solely on the dialogue alone. Being the Ricardos is no exception.
In Being the Ricardos, everything is written exceptionally well. Lucille trying to find the truth in her life motivates her to look at people to see if they are genuine or not. Desi wants his wife to be happy no matter what and denies her accusations, not defensively, but instead soothing her with his words of support and affirmation of love. Both of these characters are played skillfully by Kidman and Bardem. It is easily their best roles of 2021 and they bring their characters to life. The problem is, these characters are archetypes that have been seen before in other Aaron Sorkin scripts. In the past, his witty writing is perfectly suited for subjects such as the rise of the tech giant Facebook and a morally bankrupt general in the Marines, but it does not suit a complicated period in Lucille Ball’s life and I Love Lucy.
There is nothing aesthetically wrong with the film. The writing nails what it wants to say and the story is paced rather well when it jumps around in time, but this is not suited for a story about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Essentially, Sorkin has used the lives of these real people to craft another perfect script. By doing this, he glosses over the importance of the source material, that being the I Love Lucy show. Sorkin assumes that the audience watching Being the Ricardos understands why the show is great without elaborating on the impact it had on television at the time. Instead, he delves into the nitty gritty of her personal life. He applies his own interpretation, world view, story structure and dialogue cadence into personal events such as the affair and accusations of being a communist. All of the characters act like Aaron Sorkin characters and it does not make this biopic realistic, just a well-done drama that does not put value in the source material and uses historical events as character insight and plot points.
The takeaway is that Sorkin is playing it safe as a creative individual. He has found a niche in Hollywood and sits comfortably doing what he does best. Being the Ricardos is filled with witty dialogue, devastating insults and perfect story structure making it into an ‘Aaron Sorkin film’. I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are just pieces in a puzzle for Sorkin to create his own story. He essentially borrowed from someone’s tumultuous life to create a film and does not properly illustrate the influence and importance of the I Love Lucy show or Lucille Ball herself. The best of Aaron Sorkin’s work depicts people who are cold emotionally and he shows how their coldness is destructive to others around them. This writing style is then placed on Lucille Ball, and the film that has been created is a cold representation of a witty, talented and warm person. Without extra knowledge on Sorkin’s past work, it is possible to see the film as wholly original and fascinating. However, once Sorkin’s past screenplays are brought into the picture, it is then clear that Being the Ricardos is just another Sorkin film; what a waste.