I’m yours ‘till I die
As the signifigant songwriters of the 20th century go–signifigant meaning Berlin, Gershwin and of that caliber–Cole Porter is probably my favorite. I am alone in this with only a few million if not billion others.
Why, then, did I not like last years bio-pic of the composer, De-Lovely, more? Having just seen it on DVD the first thing that comes to mind is that a wrong decision was made early on: To take most of the songs away from the main characters. Death. Death. Death. They are mostly sung, instead, by nameless nonentities in the sense of the film, but singers (Lara Fabian, Diana Krall) thrown in to pander after that all-important “youth market.” Death. Death. Death. Death in a musical, and so unnecessary.
Look, musicals mostly work, on stage but perhaps especially on film, if the characters get to a place where they simply cannot say what they want to say in any other way but to sing. At least in the post Oklahoma! sense of shows being musical dramas and not revues. Here we have two characters–Kevin Kline as Porter and Ashley Judd his long-suffering wife–who get to the point where they simply cannot say what they want to say in any other way–but to have someone else sing. Singers playing actors performing the music in Cole’s shows. But we don’t care about them, and so we are detached.
Judd has a perfectly fine singing voice, too briefly on display here (can’t think where she gets it from) and Kline is a Tony Award-winner. Unfortunately, another wrong decision was taken to have his singing voice in the film reflect Porter’s real-life limitations in that area. This is an example of verisimilitude getting in the way of dramatic satisfaction and should have been sacrificed. It don’t work, keeping the leading characters of a musical so silent or off-key.
What shouldn’t have been sacrificed is the idea of telling the story of the Porters’ unconventional marriage in the form of a musical using his cool, romantic and evocative songs. But–and here’s the crux of it–it shouldn’t have been a movie, at least not one directed by the aggresively uncinematic Irwin Winkler. Or with this leaden screenplay by Jay Cocks, a former critic (and don’t think that doesn’t scare the hell out of me).
There is simply nothing in the film that couldn’t have been done on stage, so in heaven’s name, why not do it on stage? Not the way they did it, of course, but an intimate musical, perhaps even a two-hander along the lines of I Do, I Do or Marry Me A Little. One where, perhaps, the sole instrumentation needed comes from a piano onstage. And characters sing their love and other feelings in Cole’s words and music, and their emotions comes through in these.
Instead of this sometimes too literal, but stiff and uncomfortable when it’s trying for flights of fancy, total wreck, worthless check, and flop.
