I cannot agree with the refrain of 'gratuitous' and 'sensational' and 'vulgar' that sounds depressingly throughout too many reviews of Ken Russell films; at his best there is a great deal of organising and artful design and discipline in Russell's films. His choice to externalise inner states is a pure and brilliantly conceived aesthetic strategy that begs for more of cinema to exploit such possibilities; Russell is one of those real filmmakers who have broken away from the dramatic structure of the live stage, in order to liberate the kinetic energy of pure cinematic art. I have never understood why Russell's vivid and persuasive 'dreams' - perhaps more helpfully viewed as psychotomimetic episodes - are not as aesthetically acceptable as Fellini's, say, or the kind of radical creative deconstruction practiced by Godard.
In 'The Music Lovers' the world is turned inside-out to show character's inner mental workings - not in the narrative manner of the traditional stage, but by using to the maximum the too-often neglected potential of cinema. This is a radical application of the artistic necessity of ensuring that 'form follows function' and as such is unexceptionable, and indeed praiseworthy. The film is thereby brilliantly enabled to involve us directly with the inner turmoil which is the dynamic of the persons in the film.
Is it true to life? Better ask, Is it a biography of the man who was the composer Tchaikovsky? The answer is then obviously: No. But that conclusion only serves to avoid discovering what the film is actually trying to do. It is of course a journey into the loneliness of a man set apart by the burden of genius, and by the haunting childhood tragedy of his mother's death from an incurable disease. This is an important aspect of the great composer's life, and as such Russell gets as close to such intimate detail as - I venture to suggest - would be possible even for any scholarly study; perhaps closer, in terms of our imaginative and emotional identification. And, one should add, the lonely martyrdom of the unfortunate Nina, locked in a loveless marriage as the mere social convenience of an homosexual forced into denial by an intolerant society, is equally effectively and movingly evoked as an intimate part of the composer's tragedy. That tragedy ultimately also involves inflicting deep harm on his sister and his sensitive aristocratic Muse through his moral dishonesty - not to mention his cruelty towards his real lover, the sad and sincere Count Anton Chiluvsky, who had a right to expect better.
Furthermore, although not a mere plodding hagiography of secular sainthood, the film is nevertheless beautifully dressed, designed and photographed, and frankly manages to appear as lavish and sweeping a romance as David Lean's honestly - i.m.h.o. - rather grandiose and pompous epics 'Lawrence of Arabia' or 'Doctor Zhivago.' Indeed Ken's brilliant evocation of 'Old Russia on-the-cheap' is a masterclass in effective mise-en-scene, and reveals a grasp of the essence of filmmaking that is not dependent on an obscenely big budget or empty epic gestures: everything on screen has an irresistible presence and force.
I'd even dare to suggest that the scenes with Madame Nadedja von Meck at times reach the sort of understated grandeur of Visconti.
The clever script by novelist Melvyn Bragg also provides a strong narrative spine that supports Ken Russell's unconventional interpretation well. The same is true of the care with which the actual music of Tchaikovsky is chosen and employed as a setting to authenticate the achievement of the composer, the spectacle of whose dysfunctional and tragic life only convinces us the more of his heroism, rising as it does like a glorious musical monument above all the misery and disaster.
The final 'Borodino cannon' bloodbath is generally derided, even by those who otherwise praise the film. That much maligned cannon scene, accompanied on soundtrack by the rackety 1812 Festival Overture, is surely an obvious reproach to the composer for trivialising the tragedy and horror of Napoleon's military invasion of Russia, in a piece of popular rabble-rousing generally adjudged (while undeniably rousing) as unworthy of the sensitive and subtle musician Tchaikovsky truly was. It was just another of the disastrous poses of macho virility he resorted to in order to mask his true nature. It seems appropriate, then, to show all the heads being blown off in this surreal finale, since that was the sort of shocking reality faced by those who fought at the Battle of Borodino, the bloodiest battle of all Napoleon's campaigns; moreover, this - very stylised and not the least bit gratuitous - massacre is meant to represent the very real hurt and insult done to, and sometimes by, those who variously encouraged or were appalled by this vulgar showmanship. The shallowness, hypocrisy and crude triumphalism of the piece was entirely unworthy of the composer, and therefore this parodic cannonade is entirely fitting as a final cinematic comment by Russell, who's film is after all about the importance of honesty and integrity. The major fact of Tchaikovsky's personal life was his tragic failure to reconcile his nature and his life: that failure to be true to himself killed him; in this interpretation, killed him more certainly than any scandal of his homosexuality. He himself loathed the Overture, writing to his friend and patron Madame Nadedja von Meck that it was '- - - very loud and noisy and completely without artistic merit, obviously written without warmth or love.'
Everyone with taste views the 1812 as just a guilty pleasure, to be enjoyed in all its noisy, vulgar splendour. For poor Tchaikovsky himself, in stark contrast, the bombastic military virility of that circus-like spectacle - it has been mocked, parodied and further debased many times since - became merely a further torment racking his conflicted soul.
Russel reveals that soul in searing images of naked emotion. Perhaps that is what is unforgiveable to the modern critical mind - not physical nakedness, which they see as a cultural liberation; but it is the spiritual and emotional nakedness of human beings that offends their prim intellectualism. Russell is firmly in the anti-intellectual camp of D.H. Lawrence - which of course is why his Lawrence adaptations work so well. Russell, like Lawrence, is serious about sex. How he ever came to be called prurient and vulgar can only be explained by the bourgeoise vulgarity of his carping critics.
Russell's honesty in presenting so forcefully and uncompromisingly the horror and incipient madness roiling beneath Tchaikovsky's polite society pose, as the premier Court Composer to the Tsar, is in marked and refreshing contrast to the sort of typical film biography that is only a kind of secular hagiography drained of all life and passion. The film's final petrification of Tchaikovsky, posed in action as the showman conductor of the '1812' sets a stiff memorial effigy upon a plinth and thus pointedly contrasts this sudden stasis with the previous living dynamism; indeed it parodies the traditional 'apotheosis' of traditional bio-pics. The frail mortal Russell has given us does great honour to the composer, who earned his legacy through hard work - and the daily grind of composing, contrary to what most critics have claimed, is realistically shown - and that terrible personal angst which made his life so unhappy, and very likely drove him to seek the same death by cholera of the mother whom the traumatised child he remained yearned for all the rest of his life.
That Russell should be pilloried for so effectively and profoundly evoking the sacrifice upon which the composer's achievements were built, is a great injustice. Russell's critics remind me of the mediocre but successful Rubinstein's vicious parody of the young Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto, as presented by the director - perhaps as a conscious riposte to his own detractors? Even the late and much-respected Roger Ebert in a very negative review notoriously dismissed Ken Russell's 'The Music Lovers' in a peevish and ill-considered manner not befitting the serious critic he was.
Russell was a brilliant film-maker - this is not often enough said - , and when smaller talents dismiss him as going 'over the top' they only remind us that, in British English, this phrase also refers to those soldiers who put themselves in the line of fire by leaving the trenches when commanded: the cry of 'Over the top!' would historically see lines of troops clamber out of their trenches and march slowly into a hail of Spandau shells. Ken was never one to flinch from critically murderous assaults or vicious sniping from his enemies. He expressed himself bravely and sincerely, so that though he eventually succumbed to his critical wounds and was forced to quit the movie field, he has left such deeds of artistic glory as are to be wondered at and admired.
In 'The Music Lovers' the world is turned inside-out to show character's inner mental workings - not in the narrative manner of the traditional stage, but by using to the maximum the too-often neglected potential of cinema. This is a radical application of the artistic necessity of ensuring that 'form follows function' and as such is unexceptionable, and indeed praiseworthy. The film is thereby brilliantly enabled to involve us directly with the inner turmoil which is the dynamic of the persons in the film.
Is it true to life? Better ask, Is it a biography of the man who was the composer Tchaikovsky? The answer is then obviously: No. But that conclusion only serves to avoid discovering what the film is actually trying to do. It is of course a journey into the loneliness of a man set apart by the burden of genius, and by the haunting childhood tragedy of his mother's death from an incurable disease. This is an important aspect of the great composer's life, and as such Russell gets as close to such intimate detail as - I venture to suggest - would be possible even for any scholarly study; perhaps closer, in terms of our imaginative and emotional identification. And, one should add, the lonely martyrdom of the unfortunate Nina, locked in a loveless marriage as the mere social convenience of an homosexual forced into denial by an intolerant society, is equally effectively and movingly evoked as an intimate part of the composer's tragedy. That tragedy ultimately also involves inflicting deep harm on his sister and his sensitive aristocratic Muse through his moral dishonesty - not to mention his cruelty towards his real lover, the sad and sincere Count Anton Chiluvsky, who had a right to expect better.
Furthermore, although not a mere plodding hagiography of secular sainthood, the film is nevertheless beautifully dressed, designed and photographed, and frankly manages to appear as lavish and sweeping a romance as David Lean's honestly - i.m.h.o. - rather grandiose and pompous epics 'Lawrence of Arabia' or 'Doctor Zhivago.' Indeed Ken's brilliant evocation of 'Old Russia on-the-cheap' is a masterclass in effective mise-en-scene, and reveals a grasp of the essence of filmmaking that is not dependent on an obscenely big budget or empty epic gestures: everything on screen has an irresistible presence and force.
I'd even dare to suggest that the scenes with Madame Nadedja von Meck at times reach the sort of understated grandeur of Visconti.
The clever script by novelist Melvyn Bragg also provides a strong narrative spine that supports Ken Russell's unconventional interpretation well. The same is true of the care with which the actual music of Tchaikovsky is chosen and employed as a setting to authenticate the achievement of the composer, the spectacle of whose dysfunctional and tragic life only convinces us the more of his heroism, rising as it does like a glorious musical monument above all the misery and disaster.
The final 'Borodino cannon' bloodbath is generally derided, even by those who otherwise praise the film. That much maligned cannon scene, accompanied on soundtrack by the rackety 1812 Festival Overture, is surely an obvious reproach to the composer for trivialising the tragedy and horror of Napoleon's military invasion of Russia, in a piece of popular rabble-rousing generally adjudged (while undeniably rousing) as unworthy of the sensitive and subtle musician Tchaikovsky truly was. It was just another of the disastrous poses of macho virility he resorted to in order to mask his true nature. It seems appropriate, then, to show all the heads being blown off in this surreal finale, since that was the sort of shocking reality faced by those who fought at the Battle of Borodino, the bloodiest battle of all Napoleon's campaigns; moreover, this - very stylised and not the least bit gratuitous - massacre is meant to represent the very real hurt and insult done to, and sometimes by, those who variously encouraged or were appalled by this vulgar showmanship. The shallowness, hypocrisy and crude triumphalism of the piece was entirely unworthy of the composer, and therefore this parodic cannonade is entirely fitting as a final cinematic comment by Russell, who's film is after all about the importance of honesty and integrity. The major fact of Tchaikovsky's personal life was his tragic failure to reconcile his nature and his life: that failure to be true to himself killed him; in this interpretation, killed him more certainly than any scandal of his homosexuality. He himself loathed the Overture, writing to his friend and patron Madame Nadedja von Meck that it was '- - - very loud and noisy and completely without artistic merit, obviously written without warmth or love.'
Everyone with taste views the 1812 as just a guilty pleasure, to be enjoyed in all its noisy, vulgar splendour. For poor Tchaikovsky himself, in stark contrast, the bombastic military virility of that circus-like spectacle - it has been mocked, parodied and further debased many times since - became merely a further torment racking his conflicted soul.
Russel reveals that soul in searing images of naked emotion. Perhaps that is what is unforgiveable to the modern critical mind - not physical nakedness, which they see as a cultural liberation; but it is the spiritual and emotional nakedness of human beings that offends their prim intellectualism. Russell is firmly in the anti-intellectual camp of D.H. Lawrence - which of course is why his Lawrence adaptations work so well. Russell, like Lawrence, is serious about sex. How he ever came to be called prurient and vulgar can only be explained by the bourgeoise vulgarity of his carping critics.
Russell's honesty in presenting so forcefully and uncompromisingly the horror and incipient madness roiling beneath Tchaikovsky's polite society pose, as the premier Court Composer to the Tsar, is in marked and refreshing contrast to the sort of typical film biography that is only a kind of secular hagiography drained of all life and passion. The film's final petrification of Tchaikovsky, posed in action as the showman conductor of the '1812' sets a stiff memorial effigy upon a plinth and thus pointedly contrasts this sudden stasis with the previous living dynamism; indeed it parodies the traditional 'apotheosis' of traditional bio-pics. The frail mortal Russell has given us does great honour to the composer, who earned his legacy through hard work - and the daily grind of composing, contrary to what most critics have claimed, is realistically shown - and that terrible personal angst which made his life so unhappy, and very likely drove him to seek the same death by cholera of the mother whom the traumatised child he remained yearned for all the rest of his life.
That Russell should be pilloried for so effectively and profoundly evoking the sacrifice upon which the composer's achievements were built, is a great injustice. Russell's critics remind me of the mediocre but successful Rubinstein's vicious parody of the young Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto, as presented by the director - perhaps as a conscious riposte to his own detractors? Even the late and much-respected Roger Ebert in a very negative review notoriously dismissed Ken Russell's 'The Music Lovers' in a peevish and ill-considered manner not befitting the serious critic he was.
Russell was a brilliant film-maker - this is not often enough said - , and when smaller talents dismiss him as going 'over the top' they only remind us that, in British English, this phrase also refers to those soldiers who put themselves in the line of fire by leaving the trenches when commanded: the cry of 'Over the top!' would historically see lines of troops clamber out of their trenches and march slowly into a hail of Spandau shells. Ken was never one to flinch from critically murderous assaults or vicious sniping from his enemies. He expressed himself bravely and sincerely, so that though he eventually succumbed to his critical wounds and was forced to quit the movie field, he has left such deeds of artistic glory as are to be wondered at and admired.