Of Biographies and Voyeurs
Of Biographies and Voyeurs
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco [Video Troll]
Published in: The Manila Times, September 14, 1987
MUCH of the ongoing fascination with biographical and semi-biographical tapes stems from our own inherent fascination with the lives of other people — particularly with great or significant historical personages. Hollywood has long been notorious for twisting biographical material to serve its own box-office ends, and in more recent times, even the trend towards ultra-realism has not been without its share of "stylized biographies." The term now use is "artistically tainted," and together with the straight-laced documentary, both genres serve our voyeuristic appetites with more than enough material to satisfy. Here are some of the better video titles available:
Mishima - The romance with pageantry and pain turns a major contemporary novelist into a sword-wielding half-wit bent on restoring the honor of feudal Japan on the point of his blade. Tormented by his own feelings of inadequacy and impermanence, he nurtures himself into a demigod, obsessed with body-building and the code of Bushido. But his homosexuality, his own questionable honor, and his inability to transcend self-doubt drive him further into a fitfull slump, and in time, the fiction and fact of his existence intermingle and consume him with the violence born out of frustration. Outstanding cinematography and compelling characterization rescue this film from its vicarious flirtations with disaster.
Waiting For The Moon - Made for US public television, this somewhat text-heavy video details a "fictionalized" episode in the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, leading lights of the Parisian art world in the early part of this century. Stein, the gifted American author, is a brilliant neurotic, given to spells of depressive morbidity and deadpan tongue-lashings. Toklas is Miss Supportive personified, unflustered, amiable, forgiving, and solid as a rock. With all the makings of an ideal (if rather turbulent) relationship, it's little wonder that theirs was an immortal liaison that endures elegantly in myth. Starring Linda Hunt and Linda Bassett.
Young Harry Houdini - A Disney movie made for general family viewing, this fantasy-adventure feeds off the rejuvenated Houdini myth, even while taking casual liberties with the so-called "hidden years" of the great illusionist's boyhood. Houdini, whose strong views against mysticism and the occult contributed in no small way to his eventual loss of popularity, is depicted in this full-length feature as a "closet mystic" of sorts, entrusted with superhuman powers by a mysterious Indian sage. Although the story-line would almost certainly make him turn in his grave, the film is credible enough as weekend fare, and makes for enjoyable viewing by young and old alike.
Nijinsky - A dark, brooding drama that explores the fragile ties between this legendary dancer and his lover-cum-mentor, the fabled Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Leslie Brown as Vaslav Nijinsky is an overgrown adolescent, magnificently talented but emotionally frail. Alan Bates' Diaghilev is cosmopolitan aristocrat twice Vaslav's age — his manager, source of strength, and proverbial keeper. When Vaslav dares to defy his doting beau by marrying a lady member of the latter's own dance company, Diaghilev's fury knows no bounds. He expels Nijinsky from the world-famous.
Ballet Russes - a blow from which the dancer never recovers — and leaves him to spend the remainder of his days in a mental institution. Although a wee bit morose from start to finish, patient and mature audiences will be handsomely rewarded for wading through this unusually well-crafted film.
Scott Joplin - Motown is at it again! after appearing alongside Diana Ross "Lady Sing The Blues", Billy Dee Williams now stars in the role of Joplin, composer of the vintage soundtrack from "The Sting", and probably the first popular black American musician. hoping to elevate ragtime into a serious musical form, and driven by his determination to write and produce the first contemporary black opera, Joplin's shady past as a piano-player for a New Orleans brothel eventually nails him down in midstream. Stricken with syphillis — incurable in his day — the composer's wife and friends abandon him to an ignominous end as a burned-out hobbling shell of his former self. Indeed, martyrdom appears to be the fate of most great artists, and Motown seems equally determined in its own efforts to establish that both Joplin's and Billie Holiday's heavy pigmentation virtually sealed their doom.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Of Biographies and Voyeurs” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, September 14, 1987
