In today's (London) Sunday Times
The music world reviled last year's book about
Jacqueline du Pre. They will hate the film more, says
HUGH CANNING
Bitter and twisted
When Jacqueline du Pre died - slowly and horribly - of multiple
sclerosis in 1987, the musical world mourned. We had already borne the
sadness of a brilliant young career cruelly curtailed when the illness
forced her withdrawal from the concert scene in 1973. Now those who
revere her memory and treasure her recorded legacy - most notably her
irreplaceable EMI recording of Elgar's Cello Concerto conducted by her
adored Sir John Barbirolli - are being subjected to the trauma of her
reputation being dragged through the mud by the bitter and twisted
memoir of the cellist by her brother and sister. Their book, with its
sarcastic, envious title, A Genius in the Family, appeared last year,
and now there's the film of the book, Hilary and Jackie.
When the book was published it provoked an outcry among musicians,
most notably the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, who may not have been
a lifelong intimate - he attended her cello classes after the illness
had struck her down - but who says he did not recognise the portrait
of the musician painted by Hilary and Piers du Pre in their book.
EMI, to its eternal credit, refused to release any of its precious
du Pre archive to the film-makers - but I hope those who want to buy
her Elgar Concerto will buy the EMI one rather than the less well
played and more self-indulgent version with Daniel Barenboim released
by Sony, which is issuing the "soundtrack". Moreover, I was told by
Lloyd Webber that Sony's own star cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, declined his
company's invitation to overdub the musical snatches. Bravo to a
musician with a sense of decency.
The film, Lloyd Webber says, is worse than the book, and he is
supported by another international British cellist, Steven Isserlis,
who took up the instrument thanks to the inspirational example of du
Pre. When I spoke to them last Tuesday - having just seen Hilary
and Jackie myself - they condemned the film as "appalling", and it
is hard to imagine any genuine music-lover who would not agree with
them.
According to the promotional press release, the film "celebrates the
extraordinary life and the unrestrained musical genius of Jacqueline
du Pre and the highly emotional and volatile relationship she had
with her sister, Hilary", but this is, at best, hype, at worst a
gross misrepresentation of the film's synopsis.
Du Pre is portrayed long before her illness as a spoilt, calculating,
foul-mouthed sexual predator, and it goes without saying that her
musical achievements are marginalised while her alleged sexual
involvement with her brother-in-law, Christopher "Kiffer" Finzi - a
liaison actually encouraged by Hilary du Pre - is the actual raison
d'etre of the film. A typical example of the music being used as
the wallpaper background for a bonk story is the scene in which Jackie
hears Hilary and Kiffer making love in the bedroom below and starts
to practise the opening chords of the Elgar Concerto, waking the rest
of the household - the Finzi children - in the process. The camera,
of course, focuses on the bonkers rather than the cellist - Caroline
Dale plays the music for Emily Watson's mad-looking Sarah Milesish
Jackie - but this is indicative of the "artistic" content of a movie
pretending to be about music. Scandalously, the Arts Council of
England has put money into this.
Nobody, of course, can know how accurate the account of Jackie's
relationship with Hilary and her husband actually is, for we only
have Hilary and Piers du Pre's word for it. A scene that particularly
stretches credulity is when Dame Margot Fonteyn, a friend, is visiting
Jackie in hospital and Hilary arrives. Introducing her sister, Jackie
recommends Hilary's husband as "incredibly fertile and a fantastic
f***". Alas, Dame Margot is no longer with us, either, to attest to
these words. But I think it is significant that Hilary and Kiffer's
daughter, Clare Finzi - who appears as a child in the film - has
already called into question the veracity of what the film-makers
claim to be a "true story". Last week, she told The Mail on Sunday:
"I'm ashamed that my mother is associated with something so shoddy
- it only has the shape of truth, so much of it is fabrication."
But there are other indications that make one wonder if any of it is
to be believed. Note, for instance, the precedence given to the two
sisters in the title: Hilary and Jackie. The film's "action" proceeds
in two parts, ostensibly telling the story from both Hilary's (first,
of course) and Jackie's side. But, as both Lloyd Webber and Isserlis
independently point out, Jackie's side cannot be put because she is
dead, and in any case she is played throughout as a woman who cares
less about music and her priceless Davidoff Stradivari cello - which she
improbably exposes to the Moscow winter snow on the balcony of her hotel
room - than she does about the parcels of clean washing she receives
from Hilary (we are asked to believe that, rather than send her smalls
to the hotel laundry, Jackie packs them up and posts them home for
Hilary to do - this at the height of her career, when she must have
been earning a fortune).
In two giveaway scenes, du Pre participates in a performance of Leopold
Mozart's - not Haydn's, as the film claims - Toy Symphony. Early on,
the directors laughably insinuate that it is the young Hilary who is the
real talent, Jackie the pushy also-ran. It is the child flautist Hilary
who is chosen to play in a BBC concert of the Toy Symphony - conducted
by their mother, who later makes disparaging remarks about Jews when
Jackie converts to marry the Israeli Barenboim - and Jackie causes such
a scene that she is allowed to bang a drum. Near the end of the film,
the stricken du Pre takes part in a performance of the same work - based
on an actual appearance in a celebrity gala - but she is so far gone
that she misses her entry and the conductor and audience patronisingly
applaud while Hilary's face is triumphant.
As Clare Finzi told The Mail on Sunday: "It's incredible that a film
about such a wonderful musician could be based on just an affair. It
denigrates her memory and diminishes the impact she made on so many
people." Hilary and Jackie is a cruel, gloating and cowardly character
assassination of a woman who suffered appallingly before she died. A
mirror image of the Australian film Shine - which elevated a real live
mediocrity to superstar status - it besmirches the reputation of an
artist of genius who can no longer defend herself.
At the end of the film, Hilary and Piers weep when they hear of Jackie's
death on the radio. Rather than moving me, it made me want to throw up.
Tony Duggan
Staffordshire,
United Kingdom.
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