Chevalier opens with an audacious statement so brazen it’s almost hysterical. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is performing at the Paris Opera House in full vanity, and he turns to his audience for requests. His fifth symphony is called out and the man who suggests it, a black man in fine, expensive frocks and wig, asks to perform with him. Mozart humours the notion until the man quickly proves to be an impeccably gifted violinist. This leads to a viola battle of Mozart’s 5th between the two men that the interloper handily wins to Mozart’s fuming humiliation. “Who the fuck is that?” he angrily asks a manager off-stage.
It is Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, played here by Kelvin Harrison Jr., and a remarkable figure of French history -the first black musician (not to mention fencer and revolutionary) of widespread acclaim in Europe. Yet another of those trailblazers who ought to be a household name alongside Mozart and Bach and Chopin, but due to generations of racism has been underwritten by the white western canon. According to the movie’s postscript, much of his music was lost during the Napoleonic era when slavery was for a time reinstated in France and it’s colonies. Chevalier was the son of a slave, but the bastard of a white aristocrat, which guaranteed him a certain status and wealth generally exclusive at that time to whites. And so growing up in Paris, he moved in the circles of the elites -yet always socially a step removed from them.
This is what makes him so compelling a character to centre a movie on, and indeed it is depicted effectively in this film, directed by Stephen Williams from a script by Stefani Robinson, that contextualizes Chevalier within the fading days of the Ancien Regime and the world of Parisian music culture -in which his race and class make him a distinct anomaly. He has access to the balls, the concerts, the privileged arenas of science and philosophy, and even a particular friendship with the Queen Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton); but he is frequently regarded in these circles in relation to his race, whether it be with only modestly tempered scorn, as from the Marquis de Montalembert (Marton Csokas), or with fetishistic curiosity, as from the opera singer Marie-Madeleine Guimard (Minnie Driver), who propositions him at a reception party.
As Chevalier goes about writing his own composition in expectation he may be appointed conductor of the Paris Opera, the script is very smart with the subtle ways it alludes to his otherness –an otherness he himself even takes for granted at times. He straddles two worlds that everyone else sees clearly, and the film does a great job accentuating it with more intensity as barriers fall across his ambitions. His freed mother (Ronke Adekoluejo) coming to live with him after his father’s death and engaging openly with the poor black community in Paris, becomes another permanent reminder of where he comes from and why this society he moves in will never fully let him realize his dreams.
Chevalier reckoning with his identity amidst trying to suppress or even ignore his blackness is the movie’s most compelling theme, and Harrison plays it with apt conviction. It’s a supremely confident performance from the young actor, if not particularly dynamic. He sells the power of Chevalier’s presence and personality though, his broad charm that turns to open bitterness when the system comes up against him, while also that reserved sensibility ground into him from a young age. The movie shows a glimpse of his childhood at a prestigious music school in flashback, but it’s hardly necessary as Harrison embodies the repercussions of that experience very visibly. Samara Weaving also does well with the repression of her character Marie-Josephine, the wife of Montalembert, whom Chevalier falls in love with and subsequently writes his opera around her soprano. The two are drawn quite blatantly according to the script by each belonging to underclasses within privilege of French society.
This romance and the inconvenient illegality of it becomes a major focal point of the movie and it is where the story finds the least to explore, the barest to say. Regardless of Harrison and Weaving’s modest chemistry, the forbidden love angle too often comes across tritely, and for it’s attempts to tie in with the burgeoning revolutionary thought that attracts the both of them, it comments relatively little on the truth of their social order beyond them merely lamenting it. In the course of this romance too the movie really deals in some harsh tragedy, the emotional heft of which neither Williams nor his actors have laid the ground to rise to. Robinson’s script imparts a certain gravity through the movie, and a historical consistency that can usually be matched, but the latter sequences of the love story fall short of it.
It might also be one of the reasons why this movie about a great composer doesn’t actually feature much showcasing of his musical proficiency. It is certainly there, but nowhere does it feel like the defining passion of his life the movie is aiming for. Next to something like Amadeus (an easy comparison, though Mozart is right there), there isn’t much interest in Chevalier’s music and his process beyond simply what can be condensed to montage. It’s not even clear if any of the score by Kris Bowers is drawn from Chevalier’s actual work. The postscript makes note of his famous violin skills, but apart from that opening sequence there’s little in the movie backing up that reputation. Not until a moment of Chevalier getting in touch again with his cultural roots through rhythmic bonding with a collective of African transplants does the movie show real interest in music again after the first act. As much as his dealing with structural racism and his leanings towards revolutionary ideals are essential facets, they shouldn’t come at the expense of showcasing the art itself that is most historically remarkable.
The art does come back at the end though in a way that makes for a pretty sensational climax, the film finally understanding how to fuse this character’s passions and make his music his weapon of the revolution. The drama is perhaps heightened beyond the movie’s capacity, interspersing the main action with montage of civil unrest across the same handful of sets, but it’s powerfully performed and produced. One of those moments where the weight of Chevalier’s awesome legacy is truly earned by the movie.
There are enough of these to make the movie compelling, and they’re presented with sufficient flare to distract from any typical biopic trappings. That’s not to say that Chevalier can wholly rise above it’s flaws of drama, integration, and ambition, but it holds together better than may be expected for a straightforward low-budget period piece. And perhaps most crucially it sells the importance of this exceptional figure nearly lost to a whitewashed history. If it doesn’t play much of his music it at least argues you should be taught it.
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