This motion picture about Jaqueline DuPre and her family has been the
subject of extended comment on all the music lists to which I subscribe,
mostly negative, and often laced w/ a vehemence I've generally found only
in posts about politics.

My wife and I saw this film this afternoon and liked it.

Unlike some of the people whose opinions I've read on the Internet, I was
never (need it be said?) associated professionally or personally w/ Ms.
DuPre.  I therefore have no basis for accepting or rejecting the accuracy
of the ostensible biographical material presented, and no reason to feel
personally upset over episodes that might be considered as depicting
Jaqueline to her disadvantage.  My knowledge about her personal life was,
until I started reading the Internet posts, as follows.  She was a gifted
cellist, famous for her performance(s) of the Elgar concerto, among other
works, married to Daniel Barenboim (who at some time during their marriage
had set up a menage in Paris w/ another woman by whom he had at least one
child), lover to one or more other musicians, tragically cut down in her
youth by multiple sclerosis, from which she died in her early forties.  In
the course of reading the Internet posts, I also found out that she had a
sister, Hillary, a highly talented flutist, whom she had overtaken by early
adolescence and that she later slept w/ her sister's husband "Kiffer" Finzi
(son of Gerald?), having secured her sister's approval.

What did I get from the film, besides exerpts from some wonderful music,
and hoaky scenes of Jackie playing parts of concerts to jubilant acclaim?
A touching story of a young girl w/ a slightly older sister, growing up in
a musical family.  Of the musical rivalry between them which occasionally
errupted into open resentment by the one who felt eclipsed (fist J, then
H).  Of H finding herself not only outstripped but alone as J is touring
Europe while she's struggling to satisfy the appatently stultifying demands
of a weary teacher at the Royal Conservatory and rediscovering her self
worth in her whirlwind courtship by Finzi.  And of young J, bewildered on
tours in countries whose language she never learned, where she couldn't get
her laundry done, where she couldn't even make a telephone call home, and
finally coming home, only to find the sister to whose company she had been
looking forward now preoccupied w/ her new fiance.

But in addition, we learn by degrees, as Jaqueline, in real time, was
learning more slowly, but just as frighteningly, by degrees, that whe
was being invaded by an as yet unrecognizable, but nevertheless disabling,
disease.  She believes she may be going mad.  Afraid to disclose her fears
she seeks reassurance from her husband (Barenboim) that he would continue
to love her even if she never played again and gets only an evasive answer,
whereupon she runs off to her sister.

And now we come to the episodes for those who sought out the film for the
prurient passages.  I suspect these are the scenes that Jaqueline's friends
and admirers resent and perhaps even deny the accuracy of.  Being simply an
admirer but no friend of hers, I can watch those scenes, not caring about
their accuracy, and accept them as the self-fulfilling nightmare of a
gifted person believing she's going mad.  (There's even a frightening scene
by a brook where she is found naked, bleeding, cowering and hysterical by
her sister.) All of this may be fabrication by the authors.  And were
Jaqueline still alive, it might even be actionable defamation.  But to the
extent it describes the tragedy of a gifted person who reaped her gifts
while too young to find time to learn to live a balanced life, and who now
believes herself to be going mad, I wouldn't consider the film to be
showing Jaqueline as narcissistic or selfish, as do her defenders when they
attack it.

As we observe the increasing manifestations of her disability, her
inability to hold her bow, to hold a glass, her incontinence, and finally
her inability to rise from a chair, her relief at learning that what she
is suffering from is "only MS" (rather than onsetting madness) can only
fill one w/ greater horror.  (She notes that its worst effects are probably
still years away, and at worst, she'll be wheelchair bound.) Perhaps her
friends would have spared her the indignity of being shown in the later
stages of her disabilty (and as a neighbor of a lady suffering from MS I
would never want her to see in that film what might be in store for her),
but if we can see a Spielberg docudrama, we should not have to flinch at
the vicarious exposures to the horrors of multiple sclerosis.

I have not read the book on which the film is based.  I read on one of the
Internet posts that either Jaqueline's parents or her brother had the grace
to tell her that her affliction was God's punishment for having deserted
her faith and married a Jew.  On a totally different occasion, I had read
that same remark attributed to Galina Vishnevskaya (Mme Rostropovich).
It's possible that both may have said it but I doubt it.  As a result, I
now doubt that anybody ever said it to her.  (It's a doubt I like to
entertain, because, based upon her autobiography, I sort of liked Galina,
a survivor of the German siege of Leningrad, feisty and outspoken, but
that's another matter.)

I did not view the film as an attempt by Hillary to vindicate herself at
Jaqueline's expense.  I did not come away from the film disliking either
sister.

Walter Meyer