Evita

Rating

Director

Alan Parker

Screenplay

Alan Parker, Oliver Stone (Musical: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice)

Length

134 min.

Starring

Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce, Jimmy Nail

MPAA Rating

PG (For thematic elements, images of violence and some mild language)

Review

The life of an impoverished woman who sleeps her way to fame, Evita stars Madonna as the famed Argentine leader Eva Perón.

In a quiet town in Argentina a lounge singer by the name of Agustin Magaldi (Jimmy Nail) performs a quiet round of songs to an unenthused audience. However, the popular singer has a fan in the audience, one young Eva Duarte whose parents own the restaurant he’s performing in. Her seductive arts help her to use him to achieve greatness by the age of 26.

She’s taken to Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital where she seduces many men climbing her way up the social ladder, discarding each as she goes until she meets and marries Juan Perón (Jonathan Pryce). It’s not long before she aids him in becoming the president of Argentina, appealing to the working class over the elite.

The film by Mississippi Burning director Alan Parker is very well put together, featuring a virtually non-stop musical score featuring the voice and performance of Madonna. While the piece is dramatically different than what Madonna has done before, her constant practice and hard work lead her to her best performance ever.

At her side for the journey are a veteran musical theater actor, Pryce, and a singing novice, Antonio Banderas who plays the Argentine everyman Ché Guevarra. The film features fantastic performances, Banderas’ eclipsing Madonna’s for the most spectacular.

The most memorable scene in the film is the grand opening. A theater full of Argentineans watches an old black and white picture on the big screen. The projectionist cuts the film off mid-reel and the audience boos the manager as he comes on stage. The information he presents to the audience, Evita’s death, prompts the audience to forget all of their frustrations and focus instead on the passing of a true legend in their eyes. She was a woman who worked for the common man and they rejoiced in her success and collapsed in her failures. The music leading out of this sequence into the petal-strewn state funeral parade in the streets of Buenos Aires is magical and forces the audience to choke back tears of sorrow for someone they haven’t even come to know or love yet.

If the film has a flaw it’s that there’s no respite from the music. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a beautiful and moving score and Tim Rice provided excellent lyrics for a movie that tells a very difficult and somewhat depressing tale. Based on the true story of Eva Perón, Evita goes to great lengths to capture the essence of the era. The subject itself does not make the transition simple. Perón died at a young age, which makes telling the tale even more unusual, as most musicals have seldom a tragic ending…at least at the movies.

What makes Evita so powerful is its ability to convey complex emotions through its music. A story as wide-ranging and complex as this could easily have been lost in the translation. Parker kept the musical from exceeding the production, making sure that even the most minor element is splashed visually on the screen. Audiences will be torn over the film. Those who don’t care for long-form musicals will not appreciate the motion picture. Those who adore music and musicals will find a great many things to like. Those who become enraptured by the film will not soon forget it as one of the greatest pictures of its decade.

Review Written

July 12, 2004