Judy

In January 2009, I was reading a biography called Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, by Gerald Clarke. It was a Christmas gift from my parents; I’d seen it in a bookstore, and, knowing what little I did about Ms. Garland (mainly, her role in The Wizard of Oz and the fact that she died of an overdose), the book gripped my interest. The more I read about her — her chaotic parents, the abuse she endured as a child star, her ups and downs with drugs, relationships and career comebacks — the more I wanted to make a movie about her.

Two months after I finished reading, it was announced that Harvey Weinstein had acquired the rights to Mr. Clarke’s biography, and that a screen adaptation was in the works. I was devastated — but decided to take the high road. I wrote a letter to Mr. Weinstein expressing my love of Judy Garland and my wish that I could have been the one to bring her story to life.

I gave him my best wishes, and wrote that I was eager to see what sort of vision he had to offer.

A few weeks later, I got a response from his legal department. They assured me that, while I may have wanted to tell her story, I could be “confident that [I would] enjoy the Weinsteins’ adaptation of the life of Judy Garland.”

In other words: knock off, kid — we got here first.

In hindsight, this letter reads like a warning sign: it shows how thoroughly the Weinsteins’ lawyers kept tabs of any potential disturbances on their boss’ horizons. (What executive has a legal team that intercepts fan mail from a fourteen-year-old?) And it’s chilling to realize that, for any period of time, Judy Garland’s legacy rested in such monstrous hands. In life, she was so consistently manipulated by cruel, powerful men; Harvey Weinstein overseeing her story’s screen dramatization would have added gross insult to immeasurable personal injury.

But as if by divine intervention, Mr. Weinstein did not get to tell Judy Garland’s story. The project failed to gain traction before the first allegations of sexual assault were raised against Weinstein in October 2017. In the meantime, End of the Rainbow — a musical stage play by Peter Quilter, set during the final months of Garland’s life — appeared on Broadway in 2012, with Tracie Bennett in a Tony-nominated performance. And on March 19, 2018, Judy — with a screenplay by Tom Edge, adapted from Mr. Quilter’s play — went into production in London.

It had been five months since Harvey Weinstein had been fired from his own company; two months later, he would be arrested in New York City under charges of rape and sexual assault. But that’s not the half of it.

You can call it coincidence, you can call it a twist of fate, you can call it anything you like: the magic of this fact is almost too delicious for words. Because the day that filming began — the day that Judy Garland made her second coming — was not just any old day. Not for Mr. Weinstein, anyway.

It was his birthday. In the words of Will Hunting: “how do you like them apples?”

And now, at last, we have a movie to enjoy. Judy is a sensitive, affecting portrait of a star on the fade — a heartbreaking testimony to the need for love that drove Judy Garland to perpetually seek it out in whatever way she could: through motherhood, through husbands, through performances and interactions with her audience. The most tangible element of her life, as evidenced here, is the relentlessness with which personal failures worked against her better interests: in the film, she accepts a residency performing at a London nightclub in order to provide for her children — but because she’s forced to work so far away from them, her ex-husband argues that she’s unfit to retain custody.

We see through flashback that Garland was terrorized in childhood by adults who restricted her motions, fed her addictions and manipulated her self-esteem. She felt, and was punished for feeling. Thus her life became a push-and-pull between yearning and self-destruction. She became her own enemy — a mass of insecurity huddling up to the doubtful warmth of footlights.

Embodying this tender mass is Renée Zellweger, who brings remarkable tenacity to the role; she captures Garland’s frailty while infusing every gesture with kinetic force. She is backed by a lovely supporting cast — namely Jessie Buckley as Garland’s stoic, concerned manager; Royce Pierreson as her patient musical accompanist; and Andy Nyman and Daniel Cerqueira as a gay couple who treat Garland to a home-cooked omelet after one of her shows.

Judy is a highly optimistic spin on its subject’s final months, and it pulls this off, in part, due to its being populated with kind people. Mr. Edge and director Rupert Goold serve with a fullness of heart that transcends homage: their movie becomes a sort of rescue, a restoration of sullied treasure. Just as, thirty years ago, people with brushes chased away grime that clung to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel — so, too, in the hands of these actors and filmmakers, have Ms. Garland’s blemishes been swathed and soothed.

Some of this movie’s critics have accused it of being too clean in its delivery, too pretty; the truth is, as she neared her end, Garland was far feebler, and her behavior even more alarming than is suggested by Ms. Zellweger and Mr. Goold. Yet Judy does Garland the service of evoking her final act with some sense of poetry: it provides the clarity she was unable to locate in life, and offers a resolution that remains true to her failings while rhapsodizing their power. Where did her strength as a singer come from, but from the depth of her agony? What was her triumph, if not her wobbly stand against indescribable loss?

There are people in this world who vindicate themselves through imperfection. Judy Garland was such a person: a shivering spark, a living wound that cried as it bled. Now, in the wake of #MeToo and the dethroning of Harvey Weinstein, her ultimate victory is all the more apparent. She may have suffered in life, but her feeling was truer, more enduring than the sort of brute aggression that leads some to seek to control not just their own lives, but the lives of others.

History has set the record straight: she was there. She lived it. She felt it. And now — again, with Judy, after all this time — we can feel it, too.