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John Wilmot
About
John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester (Johnny Depp), is always the smartest guy in the room. He's also the most impatient and deliberately obnoxious. The Libertine follows Wilmot's exploits, up until his exceedingly ugly and noseless death from syphilis at 33. Clever and colorful, he opens and closes the film with monologues: "Let me be frank at the commencement," he says. "You will not like me. Gentlemen will be jealous, ladies repelled."
John describes himself as an ever-ready lover (for ladies, certainly, though he assures men that he's "up for that as well"). His cocky performance is calculated, as he means to expose social limits by transgressing them. "I do not want you to like me," he says. John is not nearly so spry or self-satisfied, he is increasingly self-doubting and belligerent, irritated with his fellow debaucherers (who can hardly keep up) and philosophical about what it means to transgress. As the consequences of his rule-breaking become clearer to him, the violations themselves become less so. He remains resolute even as his figure and face quite literally disintegrate, miserable and stubbornly poetic.
Source: Popmatters.com
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