It's all about the music, man

There's a certain gravitas that's often extended to historical films and TV series. It's often because they're depictions of actual events (or some approximation thereof) but it's also often a factor of the presentation. Most of them have elaborate sets, elaborate costumes, and are about people that carry themselves with some degree of haughtiness. You're frequently given the impression that you're watching something about Very Important People. In this respect, Chevalier is no different from any that have come before it. Indeed, given that it's about Joseph Bologne, who was a figure of fascination to the French nobility in the years just before the revolution of 1789, it almost couldn't be more self-important. The fact that Bologne is presented as supremely confident in himself and his own abilities further lends itself that room-filling presence. But the problem with a lot of them is that in their eagerness to spend money on setting and clothing, they often fall short in what I regard as the most important aspect of film (or almost any creative endeavor), which is storytelling. Chevalier, again, is no different.

Imagine yourself watching the BBCs Masterpiece Theatre. You're in the middle of I, Claudius or Bleak House and firmly in the fantasy land of the first century CE or the depredations of the 1890s. The problem is that this program is funded by the BBC, so if you were expecting some of the genuine excesses of the reign of the third emperor of Rome or how people actually lived (and mostly died) in a Dickens novel, you're going to be disappointed. There simply isn't the creative license to show things that are that up close and personal. Even worse, since they're trying to depict an historical period that many people are quite familiar with, there will be some level of restraint on what they feel they can do in the course of telling an interesting story. This is the pitfall that Chevalier entered and was unable to climb out of. We're presented with the character of Joseph Bologne, supremely talented musician, composer, and fencer within the first few minutes of the film... and that character never changes. There's basically no development whatsoever. You can say that he comes down from his cocky high of being the toast of the town to being just another supporter of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and you'd be right. But it's still the same person, post-personal shame of losing out on his most desired position in society and post-romantic tragedy of losing the one real love of his life. He is still the same Joseph and he never stops being the same Joseph. The story doesn't really carry us anywhere past the Wikipedia entry that tells you everything you need to know. The extent of the character's development could be told by suggesting that he is forced to confront his status as a Black man in the midst of racist France. But he knew that already and so did we from the first moments of the film. So, where did we go here?

Kelvin Harrison, Jr. does well in the title role, but he's restrained by a character that doesn't really allow him to be much than what he already is. It's starkly different from his much smaller role as Christian in Cyrano, who had to fully experience some range of emotion within a scene and not just express it because that scene says so. It felt like most of the characters were kind of slotted into their roles without much of a nod to really becoming something within them. Lucy Boynton demonstrates some of the conflict of Marie Antoinette as a fellow stranger-in-a-strange-land with Joseph, who then has to conform to society's general disdain for him, despite her status as queen. But Martin Csokas, formerly Guy of Guisignan in Kingdom of Heaven, is the same straightforward "bad guy who does bad things to leading lady" as he did in that film. It's a horrible thing to be typecast, but I guess it's work. In fact, the only character who seemed like she had agency within her own sphere was Nanon, Joseph's mother, played wonderfully by Ronke Adekoluejo. Whenever she was on screen, she was needling her son about his acceptance of his role in the White (and rich) man's world, but also supporting him in being who he was and wanted to be. That character felt genuine because it sounds like a genuine mother; trying to coax her son to be something more, but encouraging him to be himself, as well. That's a bit of an internal conflict, which is what made her human, whereas everyone felt like they were just playing the role of a human.

For all of its dynamic setting that, too, falls victim to the circumstance of being more encyclopedia entry than story. The film is told in a clearly American style, without any of the longer quiet shots or moodier approaches common to French films and which it really might have benefited from. It's framed, of course, by the advent of one of the most turbulent revolutions in modern history, but it takes that highly complex and varied setting and reduces it to its most basic elements that carry little of the trauma or tragedy of the situation as a whole. Indeed, the most poignant moment of the film might have been the caption at the end that mentioned that Napoleon restored slavery in the French colonies and outlawed Joseph's music, which is why so little of it is heard today, despite its obvious quality. That, of course, has to be emphasized, since Joseph's music is heard throughout the film and really does well to carry it across some of its more obviously-delivered dramatic moments. The whole time, I felt like I wanted a film that lived up to the majesty of the score that was supporting it. I wanted more story, more emotion, more character, more something that would push this from Masterpiece Theatre to a film that I wanted to see in an actual theater... which, y'know, I did so I guess I was still just wanting something that lived up to the setting? Again, like Air, I'm not meaning to trash it. It's not a bad film. It's just not what serves its very proud and talented namesake. Oh, and the concept of Mozart being offended by someone challenging him on stage is kind of ridiculous. Mozart was an inveterate showoff and being confronted by someone just like him would have only made him that much more enthusiastic. You might have gotten a better story out of just the two of them dueling with violins.

Putting on airs

I generally like biopics. I also like most of what Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have done in their careers. So when I heard that Air was being produced by their company (Artists Equity) with Damon in the lead and Affleck supporting and directing, I expected something that was fairly high quality. And, in a lot of ways, it was. It's well-written and well-acted and funny and fairly drowns itself in 80s references contemporary to its 1984 setting, much of which I still vividly remember. But... (and there's often a "but") the downside is that it's basically a hagiography of a major corporation, not a biopic. In this story, Nike is the valiant "little guy", oppressed by the economic power of behemoths Converse and Adidas. Of course, no one with any common sense believes that that's the case and Affleck as Phil Knight and Damon as Sonny Vaccaro even mention at some point that Nike is a billion-dollar corporation. Excuse me for a moment while I search for the Davidian analogy in this supposed shepherd v giant warrior tale about the basketball shoe market because it's pretty hard to find (incidentally, the biblical David was a royal armor-bearer and one of the favorites of the king, too.) So, you're saying a billion-dollar corporation is outmuscled in one aspect of the shoe market by a couple of multi-billion dollar competitors, all the while utterly dominating an even larger facet (running shoes) of the American market? My heart bleeds. And that's the essential façade that all of the clever writing and solid acting and funny moments really can't get away from.

The basic ethical premise that the film tries to push forward is that the players were getting cheated out of value by the major shoe companies, as they were essentially free marketing for said companies by playing in the NBA, and the deal that Michael Jordan struck with Nike (that he gets a percentage of every shoe with his name/image on it) was groundbreaking and turned into a bonanza for the players. When it comes to labor being delivered the value that it creates, your friendly neighborhood Marxist is all about it, even when said labor is an elite subset of individuals on the planet. They're doing a job. Their names and likenesses are being used to push a product. They deserve a piece. The situation that the film presents in 1984 is no different than what the NCAA is trying to hide from and has hidden from since the 1950s. But the film presents all of this in the context of that "little guy" triumphing over unassailable odds with just gumption and hard work, when the truth was that Nike, given its profitability, had massive resources at its disposal. If they wanted to do a triumph of the little guy story that involved Nike, they could've done one about Phil Knight building the company by selling shoes at track meets out of the trunk of his car (which is, of course, mentioned in the film because, you know, "little guy.") If they wanted to do a story about the determination and vision and principles of Sonny Vaccaro, they could've done an actual biopic about the latter's work as a scout who created the first national high school all-star game or the creation of the ABCD camp, also to showcase high school players, or his personal drive to expose the hypocrisy of the NCAA which he's been talking about for the last 40 years. You want a story of triumphing over long odds? That sounds like a much more suitable premise.

Despite its structural failings, the film isn't actively bad. As noted, it's well-written and quite funny and Damon makes the most of the material he's given. Similarly, Jason Bateman does well as marketing exec, Rob Strasser. He's also, unfortunately, given the softball of muttering about just how important it is that he hold on to his job as one of the top executives in the billion-dollar corporation so that he can continue to bring his daughter shoes on his weekend visits. It's a sappy moment that doesn't really bring much to the overall proceedings. Speaking of which, Affleck's depiction of Knight, while decent, also doesn't bring much to the stage, as his role is to basically be Damon's constant foil, only gesturing over his shoulder at the oft-mentioned "board" and how they won't be interested in throwing away money on this basketball thing. The subtle racism of decrying the sport played by mostly Black men by the company that produces shoes for mostly suburban White people is a constant. And Viola Davis is her usual competent self as Jordan's mother, Deloris, whose steely determination to not have her son taken advantage of by these massive corporations is also everpresent. That depiction of background racism comes to the fore when Sonny visits good friend, George Raveling, who tells him about how he was not only present at Martin Luther King, Jr's speech at the Lincoln Memorial ("I have a dream"), but met King and was handed one of the original copies of said speech. Of course, when that's framed against Sonny's vision of Jordan and Nike's future, such that the film essentially compares the gamble of a talent scout on a shoe deal to the most famous speech of the American civil rights movement, you begin to see how self-important the producers' opinion of their own efforts happens to be.

Speaking of which, while I thought Affleck's direction for Argo was brilliant and thought he was unfairly robbed of at least a nomination for that work, I was left with a lot more questions in that respect with this film. He seemed to have a thing for close-ups, so that when Sonny and Rob, for example, were arguing over the budget or whether Sonny was doing his job properly, we would often be resting right on one of their shoulders or so close that we could map the pores in their faces while they half-shouted at each other. If Affleck was trying to show us how intense man-to-man defense can be in the lane, well, OK, but it left me feeling like he was engaged in what he thought was a novel technique to convey the tension of the moment but it really ended up being more distracting than anything else. And it was that kind of distraction that made me feel like all of them had kind of lost the forest for the trees. Yes, it's an amusing story, but signing a big shoe deal with an NBA star doesn't quite compare to the struggle to be treated as a human being. Similarly, when the "what happened later" captions appear on the screen, they continue to try too hard on behalf of Nike by pointing out that Phil Knight has given almost $2 billion to charity. Of course, he also ran a corporation that utilized child labor for a couple decades in Southeast Asia to ensure maximum profits on all of the products that it made, including Air Jordans. It took a lot of public pressure and an assertion of rights by workers in those countries to get that to change. So, yeah, economic rights were won for star basketball players, but not for Vietnamese kids. Hooray? And during this period, Nike went from a billion-dollar corporation to a multi-billion dollar corporation, eventually buying Converse, as the similarly self-satisfied caption details at the end of the film.

So, yeah, I don't know. Again, it's not a bad film. It's just kind of shallow on many, many levels. In a way, it's a perfect encapsulation of the decade that it spares no effort to hail and lionize. Would I rush out and hand more money to a giant corporation (Amazon) in order to see it? No. But if you want a few laughs, you could do a lot worse.