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Evita
(1996)
The long-awaited film of Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera, Evita, faces great expectations on a scale almost as epic as the film itself. The weight of the future of movie musicals (not to mention Madonna's acting career) may rest on this single film. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that director Alan Parker (The Commitments) has obviously tried very hard to make this material work. The bad news is: the material doesn't always work.
Evita stars Madonna as Eva Peron, the controversial figure of post-war Argentinian politics. Jonathan Pryce plays president and husband Juan Peron, and Antonio Banderas plays the everyman narrator. Madonna is unsurprising: she works here, and she is as believable as possible given the limitations of the screenplay, but her performance often seems the stuff of her own music videos--carefully posed and impeccably remote; this we knew she could do. Pryce, an excellent actor with musical theater experience, is well-cast as Peron, though the part is underwritten. The shocker is Banderas, strikingly good in the juiciest part. Banderas sings strongly, out-poses Madonna, and gives genuine personality to his cynical "voice of Argentina" character.
Though Evita drags at times (there are several too many crowd shots), Parker has given his film a brutal energy appropriate to the story. The film is paced with the pulse of a highly-charged nation experiencing change, and Parker wisely indulges the reality that this film is a musical instead of trying to shy from its origins. There's a liberating rush when Banderas finally breaks into song, and we're off and running. Before long, Parker cleverly interweaves dance as both a show-stopping and vividly storytelling element and uses film to its every advantage in expensive and explosive musical montages of military overthrows. The music is well-orchestrated and well-written, though Webber is occasionally too precious or overdramatic for his own good. Tim Rice's lyrics are uneven but welcome, especially when they take on their own complex life.
The problem here is that, for a two-hour-plus film, one walks away feeling little and knowing less about the supposed subjects of the film: Eva Peron and Argentina. All that remains is an impression that something has happened, a faded memory.
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