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A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris |
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Date Viewed: 1/29/00
Details:
- Jim Broadbent
- Allan Corduner
- Timothy Spall
- Lesley Manville
- Director: Mike Leigh
Score: +
The Review: This is a bonanza for any Gilbert and Sullivan fans: excellent characterization, frequent tidbits of humor, and everywhere there are snippets of song and fantasy. I left the theatre humming / singing...
"Three little maids who, all unwary,
Come from a ladies' seminary,
Freed from its genius tutelary --
Three little maids from school."
...and...
"My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time --
To let the punishment fit the crime --
The punishment fit the crime;"
...and they were bouncing around in my head for days afterwards. Talk about "modified rapture" (thanks to Stephen J. Gould)! But this movie is a similar bonanza for non-fans, because you are never subjected to an entire operetta -- only fragments, both famous and infamous.
In this period piece, the time is around 1884, "Princess Ida" has just opened, and librettist William S. Gilbert (Broadbent) is about to stumble into an artistic crisis, a form of writer's block. Couple this with a very polite row that develops with his long-time partner, composer Arthur S. Sullivan (Corduner), based on the latter's critique of boring sameness and unbelievable fantasy -- said row mediated by Richard D'Oyly Carte (Spall) -- and we're off into the world of operettas and egos, songs and actors, and two very curious people. This is a creative biography of the genesis and production of "The Mikado", arguably their most unusual and successful work.
The main characters are very well drawn indeed, both very complicated and multi-faceted. As a reference source explains:
"The famous partnership was an unlikely one. Gilbert, of the sharp tongue and topsy-turvy imagination, was temperamentally the opposite of Sullivan, the amiable though ambitious establishment composer. The two respected but did not particularly like each other; they kept each other at a distance, even in their joint work... Yet of course, that work succeeded brilliantly." (from "The Complete Plays...", cited below)
Gilbert comes across as a perennially gruff, pessimistic and overbearing curmudgeon, with a charmingly complex and doting wife. Sullivan contrasts appealingly as rambunctious, sybaritic, and worldly. Neither lack for a surfeit of ego: Sullivan's on his sleeve, Gilbert's carefully hidden.
There are only a few minor grumbles: there appears to be some artistic license in the assembly of the plot, because the most famous quarrel that erupted between Gilbert and Sullivan dates to about 1890 (lasting about 2-3 years) and post-dates "The Mikado", "Ruddigore", "The Yeoman of the Guard", and "The Gondoliers". And the gap between "Princess Ida" and "The Mikado" was only a little over one year, which is actually pretty close to the mean inter-operetta timing at that point in their joint career.
Little tidbits like these are scattered through a (highly recommended) marvelous resource book: "The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan" (illustrated by W. S. Gilbert, Norton 1976 reprint of the 1941 edition). This contains the texts of all fourteen of their light operas, a biographical chronology, and numerous (humorous) sketches by the librettist himself.
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