Dir. Robert Altman, 2003, USA/Germany, 112mins
Cast:
Neve Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Franco and the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago It's notoriously difficult to capture ballet on film, yet alone the world of ballet. Fractured and chaotic backstage, breathtakingly elegant on, successful takes on this classy art form such as Billy Elliot or The Red Shoes have concentrated on a single character's challenges and achievements. Neve Campbell's pet project, however, seeks to absorb her star into an ensemble piece that paints an authentic picture of life in a modern dance company. Who better, then, to take that on board than Robert Altman? His film follows the classic musical narrative of putting on a show, told firstly through the docu-drama style backstage dramas, and consolidated through the ballet sequences. These, in contrast, are shot with an immense grace and fluidity, beautifully capturing the contradictions of the world of ballet. The film opens and ends as a performance: the curtains open and the dancers perform over the credits, ending as the film begins and seamlessly moving into the narrative proper: a continuation of the performance. The company in question is the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, following the events of a season and the characters are played by members of the company: the senior soloist fighting change in the staging, the new kid trying to fit in, the dancer subsiding her poor income by renting out floor space to other dancers. None of these characters is really developed, however, and the film instead relies on the archetypes and iconography of the world of ballet to move the story along. Even Ry (Campbell) undoubtedly the central character in terms of screen time and trajectory remains distanced, mysterious. It's clear during the dance pieces that this is where the dancers are comfortable and they really do shine. Campbell, too, is a pleasure to watch and a talented dancer, which she succeeds in placing before her persona. By the same extension, however, it's actually quite hard to differentiate between the characters. We're rarely with them long enough to store their appearance in our memory and since they're all willowy women or muscular men what results is an homogenous mass - beautiful to watch, but in a fleeting, weightless way. This allows the film to be completely stolen by a charismatic turn from Malcolm McDowell as Alberto Antonelli, the company director. Sweeping into the film, a coffee in his hand, he's like a sudden injection of energy. His performance is larger than life - a real performer - but also spot on. His speeches to the dancers - his "babies" - are moments of comic interlude in an otherwise quite sombre film. Perhaps this is a true depiction of a ballet company - the amorphous whole led and galvanized by a central artistic force. It certainly captures the endless movement of the 'show must go on' mentality, allowing no personal dramas to interrupt the performance. As the dancer with a snapped tendon stands on crutches in the wings, watching the ballet she was supposed to be performing in, it's a moment of stillness, the camera capturing the tragic drama of her position - yet she doesn't seem to feel it. Similarly, when Ry breaks her arm onstage she's fixed up and back to the wings in time to watch her replacement dance the finale, a philosophical smile on her face. It completes the cycle of the film; just as she gets her chance to shine through another dancer's injury, so another dancer takes her place on the stage and the story begins again. It's this fluid, subtle movement to the film that from one point of view can seem shallow and fractured, yet which actually gives the seamless, inconstant feel that is a life captured. There is no great drama, no personal angst that Ry must overcome any more than the other dancers; just the dance that their efforts produce, its beauty lingering past the applause at the close of the film. Kerry McLeod |
