CINEMA: Madonna’s ‘Evita’

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Jan 21 1997 (IPS) - After years of controversy, the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical about Argentine political idol Evita Peron has opened to great success in U.S. cities – sparking, in the minds of many critics, a rebirth of modern musicals.

If so, it is a strange rebirth: ‘Evita’ (produced by Hollywood Pictures) seems less like a musical than the longest rock video ever, and is less about Evita than about the woman who plays her, none other than rock celebrity Madonna.

In only its first week of release to several U.S. cities, ‘Evita’ has already racked up some 20 million dollars in profits. The film is especially a hit among Latino audiences, who have turned out en masse to see it in such cities as New York and San Antonio, Texas.

What they are seeing, however, bears little resemblance to the life of the radio star and populist leader Evita Peron, who in the 1930s and 1940s became the living symbol of the corporatist military regime led by Gen. Juan Domingo Peron. That Evita was both a wily political operator and a shrewd lower-class woman admired for standing up to the quasi-European Argentine elite of the day.

In the film, the woman born as Eva Duarte is more pop icon than politician. She comes to the big city, has affairs with a variety of men, seduces people to bolster her career until she ultimately wins nationwide attention as a heroine to the masses. If that sounds like Madonna’s life story more than Evita’s, it is only fitting that Madonna is there to play it.

Both Madonna’s presence in the title role and the unflattering portrayal of the Perons – whose Labour Party, now named the Justicialists, still rules under current President Carlos Menem – angered Argentines before the film was completed. Although the final work succeeds at showing how devoutly Evita was adored, Argentina will have little reason to be pleased at the cluttered reading of the Peronist era presented here.

Some of the problem with interpreting Evita’s life lie in the different versions the film has already been through in its decade- old struggle to be made. Oliver Stone, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Alan Parker, has said that Evita was essentially a fascist. Lyricist Tim Rice also has a cynical view of Evita – and of Argentine politics in general – but glamourises her for what one of his cleverest songs calls “just a little bit of star quality”.

Parker’s direction, meanwhile, favours bombast, with tightly choreographed crowds of peasants, soldiers and assorted admirers performing the sort of fascist assembly-line marches that Stone presumably wants to criticise.

Into that vacuum, Madonna applies her own touch of star quality, alternating between vulnerable girlishness (which few commentators detected in Evita Peron, by the way), icy aloofness and self-love.

When Evita sings to her designers to “Christian Dior me”, or belts out in her dying moments, “You must love me”, it is Madonna’s image that shines through most clearly.

Then again, what is the film about if not rock-star celebrity? Spanish actor Antonio Banderas steals the scene, cynically commenting on all the action from the sidelines as a chorus figure named Che – although, if he is meant to be revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, he too falls short of history.

Instead, Banderas is a combination of a people’s spokesman and court jester, wailing that Argentina in the 1930s is “a bad state for a state to be in” in a voice eerily similar to Neil Diamond’s.

Amid the blaring rock guitars, ponderous ballads and often terrible melodies that mark Lloyd Webber’s style, Che’s struggle with Evita to speak for the needs of Argentine folk provides a necessary focus. The tango between Banderas and Madonna at the end – in which Che accuses Evita of selling illusions, while she defends herself for providing hope – is effective, if unclear.

Similarly, British actor Jonathan Pryce is a convincing Juan Peron, an insecure beauraucrat at some times and a commanding, martial presence at others. “She is like a diamond,” he sings with a mixture of wonder and distaste of Evita’s hold over Argentina’s poor ‘descamisados’ (shirtless ones).

Still, the film’s high points – including Evita’s signature song and Lloyd Webber’s most famous hit, “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”, here presented all too knowingly as a celebrity lament – are drowned out by more than a few blaring, grating songs.

Many important scenes, including Evita’s goodwill trips to meet Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and Juan’s admiration of fascist leader Benito Mussolini, are glossed over. By the time ‘Evita’ is over, exhaustion has replaced entertainment.

Evita-mania, however, is likely to pick up. The film has already been nominated for five U.S. Golden Globe awards, including for best film, as well as for Madonna’s and Banderas’s acting and Parker’s direction. Los del Rio, the Spanish singing group of ‘Macarena’ fame, have titled their new album ‘Viva Evita’. And translator Helen Lane has recently interpreted Tomas Eloy Martinez’s fascinating novel ‘Santa Evita’ into English.

Somewhere amid all the myriad depictions, Evita Peron will emerge.