Cinema Nova
2 March 2011
cinemanova.com.au
Review by Josephine Giles
Stephen Fry is a rightly celebrated performer who manages to combine
light entertainment with his unabashed celebration of intelligence and his
insatiable curiosity. Until I saw
this documentary, I felt I couldn’t get enough of the man. However, in Wagner
and Me, the dominance of Fry’s personality (and his bad shirts) detracts
from this reasonably informative exploration of the music and politics of the
German composer.
Wagner and Me is apparently an extended version of an
hour long documentary made for the BBC, and the lower production values are
evident in the beginning scenes with sweeping camera shots that made me feel a
bit sick. Things settle down though, as self confessed Wagner tragic Fry
breathlessly introduces us to preparations for the next production of The Ring Cycle at Bayreuth – the
spiritual home of Wagner and the site of his famous purpose built opera
theatre.
What follows is
essentially a course in Wagner for Dummies – justifiable on the grounds that
most theatre-goers know little about this ground breaking composer, except
perhaps that his operas are ridiculously long, and that Hitler was his number
one fan. And I am always pro to any attempts to educate the masses in the magic
of my favourite art form.
A narrative
tension is created by the conflict between Fry’s passionate love of Wagner’s
music, and the well documented facts of Wagner’s (and his heirs’s)
anti-Semitism – which Fry, having lost relatives in the Holocaust of WWII,
feels duty bound to explore. The documentary gets really interesting when we
are shown photos of Hitler appearing at a window of Bayreuth, waving to hoards
of delirious fans; and scenes of Nuremburg, where we learn that Wagner
sing-alongs often preceded the famous Nazi rallies. Another powerful moment is
when Fry talks to a survivor of the Auschwitz, a cellist whose survival
depended on playing for officers of the SS.
Behind the scenes
peeks at rehearsals, both at Bayreuth and at a very interesting looking
production of the Ring in St Petersburg, are interspersed with the historic and
political, but most of the music scenes are too short to be really satisfying.
While the shrieking women of the
Valkyries are always a hoot, the musical
highlight is a whole scene played on piano which demonstrates the magic
of the “Tristan Chord”, and the way that Wagner uses an unresolving musical
motif to keep the audience emotionally on tenterhooks until the final chord –
some five hours later.
Fry’s love of
Wagner’s music, and his delight at being backstage in the master’s theatre, are
infectious. But he sabotages identification with this enthusiasm through
constant self-deprecatory remarks - “You must think I’m mad” being a common
one. As well as being intensely annoying, it destroys the mood that has just
been set up – maybe by some sublime music – and here we are in Stephen Fry land
again. God knows we get enough of that on the box every week.
This doco could
have been, in someone else’s hands, an interesting exploration of whether it is
possible to separate our appreciation of a genius’s creativity from our
knowledge of their politics. Unfortunately, it comes across here as lip-service
by Fry to counter the criticism that his slavish devotion to Wagner’s music
will inevitably provoke.
Opera Australia
recently announced, to great fanfare, they will be mounting a new production of
the Ring Cycle in Melbourne in 2013. If you want to know what all the fuss is
about, Wagner and Me is a good place
to start. But, honestly, I’d wait for the DVD.
This review appears on AussieThearte.com
