Music from the Heart
Music from the Heart: Docudrama
Starring: Meryl Streep, Angela Basset, Aidan Quinn, Gloria Estefan and Cloris Leachman. Written by Pamela Gray. Directed by Wes Craven.
Rated PG. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters
POSTHOC
RATING: ** ½
Music from the Heart is Scream director Wes Craven’s most violent, goriest thriller yet. Meryl Streep plays an embittered, frustrated former violin prodigy who, enraged by constant rejection, turns to witchcraft. She exacts revenge on her tormentors by teaching the local schoolchildren to play Bach’s Violin Concerto Number One in a manner so vile, so rife with evil, that anyone who hears it turns into a raving monster who rampages through the city and ---
JUST KIDDING!
But actually, Wes Craven’s new film, a complete departure from anything he’s done before in his considerable career in the horror genre, is a likable, if not terribly successful, docudrama that relates the story of Roberta Guaspari. Guaspari is the legendary violin teacher who initiated the East Harlem Violin Program in New York that was the subject of the documentary Small Wonders.
I met Wes Craven several years ago at a screenwriter’s conference. Like many who work in the horror genre, Freddy Krueger’s creator is the most mild-mannered and highbrow of gentleman, with the soft-spoken gentility of Vincent Price. Even then he spoke of his passion for classical music. So I didn’t find it entirely surprising that he would take any chance that came along to try something that would engage that passion.
Perceptive viewers will immediately latch on to the main problem that Craven and screenwriter Pamela Gray faced in bringing this obvious labor of love to the screen. With what I’m sure is a perfectly good and authentic documentary available, what new material, what new angles, could they bring to this story, without seeming redundant?
This is the main problem with docudramas on current and contemporary subjects. For example most all the fictional movies about Richard Nixon are unwatchable. With so much footage of Nixon’s image ingrained in our minds, even Anthony Hopkins is a thin ghost compared to watching the real thing break down at press conferences. No matter how hard they try, a good documentary is bound to be superior to any fictional account.
Unfortunately, the makers of Music from the Heart are unable to surmount the problem. The story is both a fish out of water tale and the common one of the little people overcoming all odds (including City Hall) to emerge triumphant. Good enough, but they chose to delve into the now familiar string of struggling single mother clichés and it drags the film down. They take us into Roberta Guaspari’s private life, but find nothing more than a soap opera that feels like a different movie than the one where Roberta struggles to bring her students the gift of music while warring against a hostile and indifferent bureaucracy and the distracting chaos of the inner city.
The film never soars like the music and musicians to whom it wishes to pay tribute. Much of this is due to Gray’s mis-focused screenplay. I wanted to see more of Roberta’s impact on her students and their lives and how they take her into their world and what she sees. But that drama is treated in a perfunctory and episodic manner. We only get tantalizing glimpses. Roberta, who is white, seems to live in a separate universe from her minority students throughout, even at their moment of triumph at Carnegie Hall, but the film doesn’t have the wit or insight to make note of it.
The film’s score is also part of the problem, relying too much on contemporary source music on the one hand and, on the other, too much of the orchestral music is the swelling goop that has become so drearily common. And I could detect hardly any classical music at all, except for the “live” performances. Why not use classical music on the soundtrack?
This often over-agreeable film lacks the charge that great art and music brings to our lives. Considering its director’s reputation and its inner city setting, I often found myself anticipating gruesome tragedy, but Gray’s screenplay tastefully keeps it all off-screen. Instead we get Roberta’s irrelevant and uninteresting love life. Though Streep and Aidan Quinn, as her first boyfriend, Brian, work together with familiar grace and ease, you can tell they’re being professionals more than they’re being their characters. What other choice would they have with such corny dialogue?
The film often plays like highlights from Roberta Guaspari’s life done like a stage play. Characters run in from off screen to announce momentous events, then run off again. Though over ten years pass, hardly anyone in the adult cast shows significant signs of aging (especially notable with Cloris Leachman as Roberta’s mother).
Not that the film is an entire disaster. I felt some concern going in, because Craven is not known as an actor’s director. In the horror genre that may not matter so much, but in serious drama it’s everything. One wrong note can leave a sour impression that hangs around for days, like a bad song that plays over and over in your head. Here Craven and Company come through. The entire cast, no doubt taken with Craven’s kindly manner and love of music, plays it with great heart and enthusiasm throughout. The climactic scene at Carnegie is pleasing to watch, helped along by appearances and performances by such virtuoso’s as Itzhak Pearlman, Isaac Stern, Joshua Bell and Mark O’Connor, all performing together onstage with the young performers.
It’s typical to call Meryl Streep perfect, but there she goes again. Her witch-like face is perfect for conveying the passions of this hotheaded, single-minded woman. Her precise and passionate performance anchors both the film and the cast. She’s the shining hub around which this wobbly wheel spins. The young cast does fine work throughout too.
Craven deserves high marks for stepping outside the genre, but even the passion of cast and crew can’t help Music from the Heart hit the right notes. The best thing that can be said about it is it will serve as a promotional tool for keeping classical music alive in American schools. I guess that will have to do for now.
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