EVITA begins with the funeral of Eva Peron, but by the time you are half way
Madonna's 85 costume changes, and have admired at least a dozen of her 39 hats, 45 pairs of shoes and 56 pairs of earrings, you find yourself wondering if this woman is ever going to die.
Normally I'm the first to emerge from a film or play - or even an episode of Sesame Street, for heaven's sake - racked with emotion. Yet I sat through two and a half hours of this tortuous pseudo opera, intrigued, yes, by the extraordinary parallels between Madonna and Eva Peron's personas, but otherwise totally unmoved. No tears, no (intentional) laughs, no wonder, no delight.
Struck dumb. Stunned by the scale and ambition of the spectacle, yes. Alan Parker has gone to endless trouble to show post war Argentina. But with no dialogue to humanise the story and with only the watery thin lyrics of Tim Rice to rely upon, it remains a mute spectacle, a series of painterly shots drenched in period detail. History relegated to song and dance.
It cannot even be described as a stirring musical, a compelling rags to riches story which tugs at your heart strings. It's an interminable pop video - all style and no substance. Call me a crank but "the most talked about movie sensation of the year" left me cold, stricken by the same creepy detached cynicism employed by the everyman narrator (Antonio Banderas). He has a tough job, what with lyrics such as In the summer of 42/there was a military coup. What a narrative!
The question is, does this film tell any story at all? Do you leave the cinema with fresh insights about the life of one of the great icons of the 20th century? Peronism? Argentinian politics? I think not. You come out dazzled by Madonna and all that Latin swank and 1940s style, marvelling that she has survived the Sex book scandal and sure that she is headed towards canonisation. Eva Peron? Who's she?
Is there anything in the story to engage heart or mind? Of course there is. There are at least 30 books - by writers as diverse as V.S. Naipaul and Jorge Luis Borges - about the life and cult of Eva Peron. Only last Saturday night, Channel 4 screened An Unquiet Grave, a documentary devoted to the weird fight over her embalmed body.
Myth and reality collide at every turn of her story - some saw her as lady bountiful, others as opportunistic. In this film, the narrator cannot make up his mind. He mocks her, yet is obsessed. We are abused by this cynicism.
TO the strains of tango music, we discover that Eva Peron (b.1919) comes from a mean provincial town and escapes from illegitimacy and poverty to Buenos Aires. Then we have to endure Hello Buenos Aires! BA! Big Apple!, which supplies the narrative for 20 minutes or so while the 15 year old Eva is seduced, abandoned by her first lover and left to make her way in the rum halls.
She then spends an unspecified period dancing the paso doble with any old Argentinian who comes along (more tango music), meets a man who helps her become a model/actress, makes soap ads on the radio, sleeps with colonels, drifts up and down a number of staircases and winds up as mistress to Juan Peron. This final development occurs as the narrator warbles something about her never being fooled by any man ever again.
This is not Rogers & Hammerstein - there is only one song you remember and you don't need reminding.
The lyrics babble along... one minute Evita is singing a Daz - ad, the next minute she is telling Peron she'll be as good for him as he will be for her. There is nothing to mark any significant transition in this sing along format; there is nothing to distinguish what's important from what's mere detail.
Many many crowd scenes later, Peron becomes president, Eva becomes his publicist and myth and reality are permanently blurred. One minute she is throwing money at the poor, the next minute demanding "Dress me, adore me, Christian Dior me... Lauren Bacall me" - arguably the best line in the libretto.
Evita is glorified on the famous Casa Rosada balcony, while seemingly blind to the police torture and repression ordered by her husband. Said husband (Jonathan Pryce), meanwhile stands solemnly behind her on all occasions, benign and adoring, giving no indication whatsoever of his role as dictator.
Out in the streets, meanwhile, there are tanks and both pro and anti Peronistas and you don't know - who Eva Peron is singing that damn song to - but sing it she does, over and over again.
Always there are crowd scenes. But you have no interest in these crowds; unlike a classical Greek or operatic chorus, they have no narrative voice so you get quite impatient with them - one minute they are pro Peron, the next they are troublesome yobs. They never sing. You think of them merely as 4,000 extras.
If only Parker had written the screenplay. Tim Rice's lyrics most certainly aren't up to the task, or to sorting out the many historical contradictions.
When Evita died of cancer, aged 33 over two million people attended her funeral. Argentinians were bereft. Argentina was bankrupt. Nothing in this film explains the cult; or why Eva Peron should have claimed such iconic status. All it does is exploit the myth just one more time; it celebrates the cult and exhumes Evita for yet another, commercial outing.
So go for the frocks, by all means, but don't expect to be moved. Or enlightened. Compared to the debate generated here by Michael Collins, no wonder the Argentinians are in a state of apoplexy.
