A little more bravery would've helped do the passable period biopic Chevalier's subject more justice. panther_BL's review:
has a bit of a class problem. Stephen Williams’ melodic motion picture about Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges—the biracial virtuoso who took Paris by storm in the late 1700s—is a moving portrait of an unheralded figure that barely crescendos beyond a basic portrait.
We’ll get close. Saint-Georges explains to Marie-Josephine that he cannot marry her or any other aristocrat because it’s illegal for different races to marry, but it’s also illegal for him to marry outside of his class without giving up his title and income. It’s an exciting confluence of class and miscegenation laws that we often don’t consider, yet it’s still a monologue that wouldn’t be out of place in any period piece.
Again Williams and Robinson present us with avenues of possibility, but we never fully explore them. Saint-George’s relationship with his mother, Nanon , and her small court of attendees from the islands is ripe for deeper exploration. They point out that he comports himself like a white person, that all the trappings of the aristocracy have come at the expense of his Blackness. We can see that Harrison takes it in, but the film never fully listens to or learns from those observations.
Nanon tries to convince Saint-Georges that he could incorporate Black folk music into his classical orchestrations, but he rebuffs that there are “standards” to maintain. My problems withare much like this. The film would have significantly benefited from adding more of a Black perspective, capable of addressing the deeper complexities of Chevalier de Saint-Georges’s life. But Williams had standards to maintain.
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