One of the most tone deaf offerings of the year.
There’s a really obscure Dustin Hoffman movie from the 1970s called Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? which is a well-constructed exercise on narcissism and neuroses starring the actor as a songwriter whose complicated relationship with success leads him to an existential crisis of sorts. Right in the middle of the story comes Barbara Harris in an Oscar-nominated performance as a struggling actress auditioning for a part in Hoffman’s latest musical. One of her character’s defining traits is a love of opera, which is illustrated by the large handbag full of classic operatic works she carries with her wherever she goes. “I love opera,” she declares to Hoffman. “People live at the top of their lives and die very beautifully.” The quote felt somewhat revelatory, allowing me to look at an art form which I had been incredibly dismissive of over the years and recognize its essence. In the span of just over 100 minutes, Bel Canto makes me never want to think about opera again.
Based on the novel (itself loosely based on a true story), Bel Canto’s central figure is Roxanne Cross (Julianne Moore), a world-renowned opera singer invited to sing for a number of dignitaries, including Japan’s Katsumi Hosokawa (Ken Watanabe) at a private concert in the home of a South American government official. When revolutionaries invade the home as a form of protest over the government’s actions, Roxanne and the others find themselves held hostage with no end in sight, despite the efforts of a skilled negotiator (Sebastian Koch).
People going to see Bel Canto will do so hoping to see a vibrant and pulsating hostage drama, full of action and torment. Oh, how disappointed they will be. As an edition to the genre, the minds behind the film make it clear they’ve never seen a hostage drama before. If they had, the effects of such movies must not have registered. After most of the initial “we are good guys forced to act bad” nonsense is dealt with, any credible threat on behalf of the heavies disappears and Bel Canto finds itself saddled with one laughable scene after another. Apart from the mishandled (and borderline weird) montages, there’s moments featuring Moore playing backgammon, terrorists learning English (one of them actually attempting to perform opera himself) and an instance featuring characters swimming in a waterless pool. Eventually Bel Canto starts to become incomprehensible as it shows hostages and terrorists sharing a family dinner together that…I suppose someone thought would come across as beautiful?
In an attempt to function as much more than just another genre piece, director Paul Weitz attempts to inject some human drama into the mix. Yet all attempts to give Bel Canto some much needed depth feel totally too rushed; executed and explored somewhat rapidly before anyone finds out there’s not really much more to the story or the characters than meets the eye. Virtually every dramatic situation here falls with a hugely audible thud, including a pair of love stories (one laughable and the other improbable) and a handful of bonding scenes between hostages and revolutionaries in which everyone comes together and explores their feelings. Some of this would have actually managed to help Bel Canto work, but the film’s lack of context or exposition has too great of effect. The greatest casualty of this is the fact that after all is said and done, the audience never really gets to know the heroes nor the villains on a deep, personal level. Maybe this is just as well since neither side manages to make a great case for themselves as people.
Moore is such an accomplished actress, that even something as dire as Bel Canto is incapable of conjuring up a bad performance from the Oscar winner. While Roxanne is not one of her more shining moments on screen, Moore’s skill allows her to walk away from the mess unscathed, even when it comes to the shaky lip syncing. Apart from its leading lady, a pair of other performances manage to stand out in spite of the film’s lousy quality. Watanabe gets a chance to explore his sensitivity as an actor and romantic lead, while Koch commands every one of his scenes, playing the material with the strength and intensity of a performance searching for a better movie to belong in.
I get that the filmmakers in this instance were hoping that the story elements of Bel Canto would play out in glorious operatic fashion, in keeping with the film’s musical motif. Simply put, they don’t .As an admirer of Moore, I’ve got to say, I don’t understand a lot of the choices she makes in terms of projects. Every actor has his or her cinematic skeletons in their closet, but Moore it seems keeps piling them up. Psycho, The Forgotten, Freedomland, 6 Souls, Non-Stop, Seventh Son and Suburbicon are all wretched films that were lucky to have gotten greenlit and even luckier to have had Moore be a part of them. Roger Ebert once commented how he tended to go easy on actors since many of them are just trying to find their way through whatever script they’ve been given. But an actor of Moore’s stature knows what she’s signing on for, both then and now.
