More Top Film Musicals: Madonna as Evita
Kevin Kline in De-Lovely and Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Aug 22, 2008
De-Lovely
De-Lovely is a charming film, starring Kevin Kline as the legendary gay Broadway composer, Cole Porter, and Ashley Judd as Linda Porter, his unlikely wife. What is most unique about this film is how meta it is. At the start, Cole Porter is an old man, and perhaps has even died already, being visited by a director simply known as Gabriel (the implication being that this is heaven, and he is the archangel Gabriel), who is directing a musical based on Cole’s long and illustrious life. Cole and Gabriel watch the musical unfold before them, as Cole comments on the accuracy or inaccuracy of how certain things play out in front of him. It is therefore, both a film musical about Cole Porter’s life and a musical-within-a-film. Not only is it a great introduction and tribute to one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, but its structure makes it a very interesting film, in its own right. It also includes cameos by a number of popular singers of today, singing Porter tunes, such as Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crowe, Robbie Williams, and others.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Writer, director, and star John Cameron Mitchell turned Hedwig and the Angry Inch, his transsexual stage rock musical, into a fantastic independent film in 2001. Inspired by the creation myth in Aristotle’s Poetics, this exuberant and energetic low-budget film is the story of Hedwig, born Hansel, a young man in Berlin who undergoes a botched sex change operation in order to marry a US soldier and immigrate to America, only mere months before the Berlin Wall falls. The ups and downs of her career and her quest for love and ultimately her acceptance of herself as a complete person are detailed in this unique, heartfelt, and extremely tuneful musical.
Evita
Alan Parker’s 1996 film of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash hit, Evita, is an overlooked masterpiece in many ways. Though Madonna won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Eva Peron, the wondrous and monstrous wife of the Argentinian dictator, Juan Peron, many lambasted the film, more for the fact that Madonna starred in it than for her actual performance, which, once one looks past the fact that she’s most likely the biggest pop superstar in the world, is absolutely stunning, luminous, and ultimately heartbreaking. The direction is also brilliant. The multitude of scenes that Alan Parker brings to the screen during any given musical number is, frankly, astounding, as is the near-perfect editing, which often cuts in time to the music. Never has a rock opera been translated to the screen with quite so much grandeur.
Read more about movie musicals here.
