'Evita' lacks depth, but oozes with Madonnaness

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): When it first hit Broadway in 1978, Evita was hailed as the most cinematic of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals. Despite that label, it has taken nearly two decades and a score of unsuccessful directors no less than Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Attenborough and Oliver Stone, for the story to make the stage-to-screen transition. Alan Parker, whose music-laden movie credits include Fame and The Commitments, finally won the trophy, casting Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce and Madonna in the title role.

It is hard not to react to Alan Parker's Evita. The visual impact is truly electrifying. Shot in rich sepia tones by cinematographer Darius Khondji (Seven, Delicatessen), it evokes the fantasy of lost times envisioned by Webber. But, as dazzling a cinematic spectacle as it is -- packed from beginning to end with such sheer theatrical opulence -- it is somewhat hollow at the center, as if lacking a soul. For all its stunning cinematography, energetic performances, knockout crowd scenes and high-charged songs, the movie has a cold, somewhat sumptuous quality.

Establishing the criteria for reviewing Evita, however, is no simple task. First of all, the subject is a daunting one. Eva Duarte Peron, the wife of Argentina's populist president Juan Peron of the 1940s and early 1950s, was a controversial figure who was as much a heroine as a villain in the eyes of her people. She was as famous for her furs and diamonds and charitable foundations as for salting away her own charity funds. However, while worse people have been memorialized, very few have been depicted in a hit musical -- the second problematic fact especially when it involves the issue of interpretation.

As in the play, Eva's life story is narrated by a skeptic named Che (Antonio Banderas), a sort of a one-man voice of public opinion always questioning Eva's motives and doubting her ideals. Since the politics of the original Evita is interestingly neutral in exhorting double visions of icons of the right and the left, Che is like a ubiquitous device whose purpose is to bring balance and prevent the work from sugar-coating the complexity of Eva's character. Although Banderas' smoldering performance gives us a strong sense of Eva's superficial qualities and essential non- importance, it is clear that the film tries to depict her as a more sympathetic Eva Peron than is portrayed on stage.

While the stage version has a reputation for depicting Eva Peron as a conniving character, this movie version tries to explain her obsessive drive to be famous as a psychological need for acceptance. The movie's flashback to her impoverished childhood as an illegitimate and rejected daughter of a wealthy padrone seems to underscore this. Vain she certainly is, but never harsh.

We never really see much of Eva's politics beyond her allying herself to the Descamisados and avenging herself against the middle and upper classes. Neither do we see much of Juan Peron's role beyond getting freed from prison because of Eva's broadcasts, winning elections because of Eva's campaigns, and legitimizing his regime because of Eva's fame. It obviously takes an actor of Jonathan Pryce's caliber to be able to give Peron all the dignity that is possible for a man so relegated to playing second fiddle to his wife.

But therein lies the problem. Granted, as a historical film Evita is limited to the perfunctory musical script on which it is based, so don't expect it to be an accurate lesson in Argentine history or in Peronist politics. For a start, it is difficult to portray any sort of reality with an artificial setting in which people burst into song in the course of daily life. However, the movie's positive spin on Eva's character puts serious slants on certain historical facts.

For example, it suggests that she declined her long-sought nomination for the vice presidency because of her terminal cancer. In fact, the military powers had informed her husband that a coup was brewing unless he put an end to her rise to power. Thus she virtually had no choice but to step down.

Be that as it may, Hollywood's euphoric interest in her life story is understandable. It is the ultimate rags-to-riches story -- a country girl rising from poverty to stardom, marrying a country's most influential politician, inspiring the idolatry of the masses for her right mix of show biz and social largesse, and dying very young, at 32, from ovarian cancer. From the moment Andrew Lloyd Webber invented Evita, he knew it need not get caught in the nuts and bolts of fascist politics to anticipate everything from music videos to today's kinky fascination with celebrity.

Musical

Evita tells Eva Peron's story almost entirely in song with virtually no spoken lines in between, making it more of a post- modern operetta than a traditional musical. While other celebrated movie musicals such as The King and I and The Sound of Music allow ample space for the occasional dialog, Evita concentrates on the big musical numbers while ignoring the connecting words that provide opportunities for character interaction and development.

For the musically uninitiated, the schizoid changes in key and tempo can get pretty disconcerting. There also comes a point when the relentless juxtaposition of music and visuals becomes unnerving, as some images go by too quickly to be understood to start with, let alone when ravaged by Parker's constant cranking up of Webber's score.

And finally we come to the center of all the hype, Madonna. Granted, she shares a similar promiscuous background as Eva Peron -- the vaultingly ambitious material girl from the sticks who became one of the world's most popular women. Much better with a dialog-free script, her singing has also improved, yet she still can't convey anything beyond surface appeal.

First of all, Madonna doesn't come remotely close to having the presence to carry a movie about one of the most powerful women of the 20th century. She can neither convey Eva's charisma nor her legend because she is practically playing herself. The greatest irony about casting her in Eva's role is that there is so much Madonna-ness in Evita that our reaction to Eva Peron's character may be subconsciously based on whether or not we like Madonna.

Even for soundtrack purposes, Madonna's thin and fabricated voice lacks the depth and soul of her predecessors Elaine Page and Patti LuPone. It neither grips nor moves one, even when she sings Don't Cry For Me, Argentina.

The original musical score undergoes few radical changes, with only one new addition titled You Must Love Me. Buenos Aires, Big Apple, the ditsy awakening song, gets a percussive swirl to match Eva's stampeding hormones, and I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You oozes class. While most of the songs are so jangly that they seem stuck in the 1970s, the infectious pomposity of Webber's compositions hold up pretty well overall. Sadly missing, however, is the deadly game of musical chairs among Argentine generals in The Art Of The Possible -- perhaps because the generals only get to appear twice as a group, and even then only very briefly.

All in all, Evita impresses more than it moves, dazzles more than it transports. To quote Che, "The best show in town was the crowd outside the Casa Rosada crying Eva Peron!" But even if only for that, it still is an unquestionably solid and must-see accomplishment in the history of screen musicals.