Pavarotti

But, again, if I’m being honest, I love Pavarotti not for his astounding voice but for his amazing personality and infectious smile. When I was a teenager in the 1990s, I remember him being nearly omnipresent. Basically, you turned on the TV, and there was Pavarotti. As far as I could tell, he was always everywhere doing everything. Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t go to space! And he did it all with such enchanting joie de vivre.

I’m always (and perhaps far too easily) won by a smile. When people smile, I immediately like them (which is strange since my own resting face makes me look worried all the time. You would think I wouldn’t judge people based on their facial expressions, but for whatever reason, I always believe every smile I see). Whether he was singing with the Spice Girls or hanging out with Bono, Pavarotti always looked so glad to be alive. I genuinely looked forward to discovering what new antics I would find him up to next.

So I was eager to see this documentary, and I must say, I really loved it. I just ate up every second. I was on the edge of my seat, leaning forward, gazing at the screen with rapt attention, often laughing (and occasionally crying) along with this thoroughly engrossing film. Granted, Howard’s Pavarotti is basically a tribute, an adoring look at a beloved man that glosses over his faults and chooses not to examine his feet of clay in any detail. Here’s the thing, though. Every human being has feet of clay, but how many have a voice and a smile like that? If I were a filmmaker, I’d focus more on his positive qualities, too, since those are the ones that make him exceptional.

The Good:
Luciano Pavarotti was an exceptional man with amazing gifts, and in this film, we get to hear him describe himself in his own words. We also get to hear him sing many, many times, and we’re nearly always looking at his smiling face. Just watching clips of him interacting with others, waxing philosophical about his own life, and, of course, singing in that stunning tenor voice of his would be enough to make this movie worth it.

But we also get a number of fascinating interviews with a surprising variety of subjects. (It is particularly impressive that so many different women who loved the man were willing to give on camera interviews for this film.)  I really enjoyed hearing his daughters recount their impressions of him, especially because they each had distinct and enlightening things to say.

So just the content alone is spectacularly entertaining. But the way in which it is arranged and presented is also a real treat. Almost as often as I was struck by the exceptional artistry of Luciano Pavarotti, I was also struck by the exceptional artistry of Ron Howard. The way this film is put together is truly impressive. It’s not just that the material is good. It’s that it’s given to us with such careful showmanship. Like Pavarotti, Howard seems to have a very mischievous sense of humor. The way these scenes are put together and the transitions between them frequently made me laugh. We come away with the sense that the documentary revealing Pavarotti to us shares his impish sense of humor. Not everyone could so deftly use a film’s structure to further reveal the film’s subject.  I came away from the documentary just as impressed with Howard’s work as with Pavarotti’s.

Best Scene:
The two best sequences in this film feature Bono, and which you find better perhaps depends on whether you prefer to laugh or cry. (I personally cannot make up my mind.)

One thing is clear. If there’s any way to involve Bono in the documentary you’re making, then you should go for it.  (And if you want the documentary of your own life to pack a punch with theater goers, please try to make an impression on Bono.)

Maybe I’m biased because I’ve always loved U2, but I honestly believe everybody will absolutely love what Bono has to say in this film. His hilarious anecdote about the way he wrote “Miss Sarajevo” (a song I used to listen to over and over in the car just for the passion of the Pavarotti part) is easily the funniest thing in the entire movie.

Howard deserves some of the credit here, too. The way he arranges the material makes it even funnier. He’s always sure to show us images at the right time, or to pair interview clips in the perfect way to highlight the humor.

Even better than this is the way Howard later sets up what was for me the most moving scene in the film. I won’t spoil it, but watching one snippet of a Pavarotti performance made me cry real tears, and Howard does an extremely careful, methodical job of preparing his audience for this moment, to ensure its maximum efficacy. Bono gets to speak again here, to frame the situation for the audience. When you listen to him, you think, “This man is a poet all right.”  (At any rate, he seems to understand the both the human experience and the role of the artist so much better than that pretentious jerk at the opera who is exactly the type of person I despise.  Howard shows us a clip of a few annoying people reacting to a late Pavarotti performance, and I just want to punch all of those people in the face.  An enormous pet peeve of mine is someone who does nothing commenting on how someone who does something does it worse with age.  Why would you judge a performer of any kind against his decades younger self?  People do this with athletes, too, and with any woman and her looks.  It’s one of the most grating human behaviors ever.)  Howard is careful to show us everything in just the right sequence to push all our buttons and evoke the proper response.

Best Scene Visually:
The film has a surprising amount of visual humor created by Howard, just by the way he arranges and introduces the scenes. Some of his transitions are hilarious. I particularly enjoyed the moment we learned that Pavarotti was going to sing in small town Missouri.

I was also amazed to reflect on just how much of Pavarotti’s appeal was visual. I mean, obviously he had a stunning voice, but his looks, expressions, mannerisms are just as memorable.

Actually, the movie ends in a highly effective visual, a sequence of still images.

Best Action Sequence:
The film opens with a scene that initially seems jarringly like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. It’s extremely cool and also quite telling.

The Negatives:
I truly loved the experience of watching this movie. I think it’s a beautiful film and would love for Ron Howard to make a movie about me some day (although, on second thought, that one might turn out quite boring because I haven’t done anything, and I always look worried).

The one slightly uncomfortable aspect of the film is listening to the recollections of a woman with whom the married Pavarotti had a long term affair. This is recounted so vaguely. She speaks about it, but we don’t get any kind of narration or comment from him or acknowledgement from his wife. As it unfolds, the situation feels odd, almost surreal. The whole thing is so downplayed, and you find yourself thinking, “I hope this isn’t information his wife discovers only after watching this documentary.”

We do get a more definitive discussion of the breakdown of his marriage later on. But what we don’t get is any real insight into his behavior or the problems in his marriage. We’re left to draw our own conclusions.

Now I don’t have a huge problem with this. For one thing, the only person who truly has insight into Pavarotti’s personal choices is dead. Others can only conjecture. The film shows us again and again that the man had a big personality, a big heart, a life on the road, and the need for lots of love and affirmation. It is not particularly hard to connect the dots ourselves, and I personally don’t see a reason to over complicate the situation. This isn’t a biography that has hundreds of pages at its disposal to analyze and explain the subject’s every move. (Besides, I personally feel that biographies far too often give more insight into the author’s driving motivations than the subject’s.)

The movie could push a little harder on the flaws Pavarotti displayed in his personal life, but then again, why should it have to? I think we are shown and told enough to get a clear idea of the essence of the man. Why do we need more?