THE MUSIC LOVERS

Saw Ken Russell's The Music Lovers late last night. I wanted to comment on this terrific film right away but when the picture ended I was a little too tired to tickle the ivories... well, at least my computer keyboard's ivories. This is one of those occasions where I wonder how I went this long before seeing a certain movie, especially when the flick in question is based on the story of one of my all time favourite composers -- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Ken Russell clearly understood the music itself before he shot The Music Lovers, as everything is so nicely integrated: The visuals and music sing in harmony. They push together without one taking precedent over the other. (Much like director Eisenstein and composer Prokofiev did when they worked together as a team.) What makes this more remarkable -- on the surface -- is that most directors are clueless when it comes to the use of music in film, or their own films. They think it is something 'done in post'. Expecting these directors to explore a composer's body of work, or even a single piece of music, is beyond most of their capabilities. But, hey, that might just be something they are not interested in anyway. To each his own. Ken Russell is a film director who is more of an all-round artist, one who obviously understands great music. The Music Lovers is a stylized exploration of a true artist. An artist who had his demons and conflicts, like many of the 'great composers', and one who's music demonstrated these forces. (Tchaikovsky wrote music influenced by a myriad of 'issues', not because he just happened to smoke some "pot".) By the way, this film is accurate in a broad-stroke sense. And yes, the composer did drink unboiled water and did die from cholera. Tchaikovsky was a terrific tunesmith which separated him somewhat from "The Five" -- staffed by guys like Glinka, Borodin, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov... composers who could write tunes themselves, and some great ones at that, but didn't flower as often as "Mr. T". As a matter of fact, it is often said that Tchaikovsky wrote music that was the least 'Russian' of the bunch. He certainly wrote music for all time.