Despite his phenomenal success as an international film star, Peter Sellers’s (Geoffrey Rush) comic virtuosity bellied a troubled private life.  This film peeks behind the façade of his many characters to expose the one the legendary comedic actor never revealed to the public, himself.

“Peter always got the last cake, even if it was on someone else’s plate.”  So says Peter’s father, played by Peter Sellers, early in the film.  From Peter’s early days in BBC radio to the end of his career, The Life an Death of Peter Sellers plays like the film version of Sellers’s life as written, directed, and starring Sellers himself.  The world was one big set for Sellers, who made a show out of everything, so much so that it soon became unclear what was real and what was happening only in his mind.

The Goon Show, where we first see Sellers performing on the radio, was a long running BBC radio show that was popular in the 1950’s.  It was an anarchic forerunner to shows like Monty Python.  Sellers created a range of characters, enacting several over the course of a single show, but he had larger ambitions.  His mother, Peg, also had larger ambitions, and the force of her personality is what drives Sellers in the beginning.  “Do you want to be a failure like your father?” she asks him early on.  Peter’s mother and father were entertainers, and they raised Sellers in a rootless, unorthodox fashion that stunted Peter’s emotional growth.  He is an adult infant in many ways, knowing few if any boundaries, and seeking to please his mother above all else.  When he makes a film with Sophia Lauren, he imagines the two of them in a passionate love affair.  He fawns over Sophia right in front of his wife, Anne (Emily Watson), asking her if it is possible for a woman like Sophia Lauren to be attracted to a man like him.  The delusion is so real for him that he actually leaves his wife, and coldly.  When his daughter asks, “Do you still love us?”  Sellers replies, “Of course I do.  Just not as much as I love Sophia Lauren.”  He keeps this fantasy going, even when it is painfully obvious that she is not interested and it has made the atmosphere on set uncomfortable.  Sellers eventually settles for Lauren’s stand in, something which leads to one of film’s sharpest lines of dialogue.  “Have you ever ridden in the back of a Rolls Royce,” he asks the stand in.  “It’s the next thing to a Bentley.”

Sellers was an unlikely film star, but he was able to force himself through the door by sheer force of personality and genius.  Peg would accept nothing less, and she knew enough to know that IMAGE was everything; what you are is far less important than what you can make people think you are.  Sellers uses his gifts and a little larceny to get where he needs to go.  “Bite the hand that feeds you,” Anne tells him, and he does.  When he steals The Pink Panther from the already established David Niven, the force of Peter’s ego began to surface.  The film deals mostly with his more well known roles, and there is little hint of how much he actually worked.  Sellers acted in more than 70 films, the late 50’s and early 60’s being particularly frenetic.  The focus is largely on his collaborations with Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Tucci) and Blake Edwards (John Lithgow).  Kubrick knew how to manipulate Sellers, and he got two outstanding performances out of him.  The shooting of Dr. Strangelove is seen here, with Sellers taking his roles a bit too far.  Interestingly, there is no mention of Lolita, in which Sellers played Quilty, a dark, noncomedic, manipulative performance that may have been closer to the real Sellers.  The love hate relationship with Blake Edwards is given more screen time.  When Sellers needed money, they would make another Panther movie.  For all the fame Sellers got the the Clouseau series, Sellers came to resent the role.  When he is first given the script, he says the title, “sounds like a bloody strip joint… for poofs.”  His opinion of the series does not seem to have been elevated in the ensuing years.

Home movies are a central theme to the film.  Sellers made a lot of films that represented where he was in his life, and he also recorded hours upon hours of his own home movies.  His home movies were staged, with multiple takes, the vision of Peter’s home life that he wanted people to see.  The home movies Sellers made were themselves a performance, a put-on, a lie.  Sellers knows this, and as the years go by, he cannot live with it.  After a string of bombs, he finds Jerzy Kosinski’s novel Being There, and in it he sees a character that mirrors the way he sees himself: a man with no past, no personality, no identity of his own.  It takes about seven years, but he gets the film made, his crowning achievement.  Sellers watched Being There in his home, as if it were the closest thing he ever came to making an honest home movie.  This storytelling device is quite effective; with Sellers, the performance never stopped, often to his own detriment.  The film itself plays like a home movie of sorts, with Sellers playing, at various times, his own parents, his wife, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards, and others.

In The Life and Death of Peter Sellers we Peter Sellers as a self-hating mess of a human being behind the comedic façade, a man who did not see himself as funny or interesting, but who was able to create these legendary, timeless characters.  Sellers was so good that he was never able to escape it, he was never able to play anything straight.  Geoffrey Rush gives an inspired performance as Sellers; he has not been this good since Quills.  Rush also has an incredible pool of talent around him.  The script crackles with great dialogue and many memorable one-liners.  The filmmakers were able to recreate the period in amazing detail, a deft mix of our nostalgic view of the past and how the past might have actually looked.  The film’s greatest success is that all of this is done without winking at the audience.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is presented in the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The picture quality is superb, expertly capturing all color levels.  The color palate in this film is quite sophisticated, and it is well rendered here, as are the black and white levels.  The transfer is pristine.

Audio Commentary With Actor Geoffrey Rush and Director Stephen Hopkins: Star and director talk about some of the changes that were made during filming and how each scene relates to Sellers’s real life.

Audio Commentary With Writers Cristopher Marks and Stephen McFeely: The two scribes talk about Sellers, writing the film, the research they did and how the project evolved.

Eight Never-Before-Seen Deleted Scenes: As the writers said, if everything they wrote had been shot, the film would have been about six hours long.  There is not a bad scene here, but it is easy to see where they might have slowed the film down.

Making The Life and Death of Peter Sellers: A behind-the-scenes look at the film, with the stars and director giving some analysis of Sellers and how they tried to bring that to the screen.  Of particular interest is Blake Edwards talking about working with the man.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a penetrating look at a comedic genius.  Geoffrey Rush gives a bravura performance, and he is surrounded by an exceptional supporting cast.  The bonus material adds a layer of understanding to the film and to Sellers himself.  This film has earned all of its well deserved praise.