‘The Music Lovers’ or — The Thrill of Hysterical Unsubtlety?
Love him or loathe him (and I just so happen to love him) there’s no denying that, outside of Jean-Luc Godard, no other film director had quite the ear for music than Ken Russell. Not only that but he also possessed a remarkable eye for generating images that captured the rapturous dream-state of listening, creating and desiring and ‘The Music Lovers’ (1971) demonstrates this ability to an exhilarating extent.
Which is just as well as I can’t STAND Tchaikovsky’s music, frequently finding it a load of over-blown romanticised twaddle, and that’s putting it mildly (all those big chords jumping up and down the piano in such an ungainly manner like some monstrous 100ft high Richard Clayderman gone berserk).
Fortunately Russell’s film, written by Melvyn Bragg, is about more than just the music as it’s also about the devastating effect of repressing our true natures, the different forms of pleasure, the price of the creative process and the unattainable love of the unreal (everyone in this film appears to be desiring a projected ideal at a distance as though genuine human contact would be lethal).
Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain) marries Nina Milyukova (a phenomenal Glenda Jackson) out of a need for intimacy and to cover his homosexuality. When the inevitable toll of this situation becomes unbearable it impacts not just Tchaikovsky’s ability to compose but both his and Nina’s mental state.
Russell portrays all this through his usual high-energy mixture of proto pop video spark meets silent cinema story-telling, something that hits us from the very beginning as we’re introduced to all the major players each having wordless flashbacks recounting their connection to the composer as he plays his Piano Concerto №1. From here on out it’s a flurry of ravishing imagery, oceanic passions and galactic scale histrionics. In short — it’s deeply hysterical and profoundly unsubtle.
But it’s that hysterical unsubtlety I adore about Ken Russell because this film isn’t about factual biography, historical representation or accurate reality but, instead, the delirious and dangerous ecstasy inherent in the creation and consumption of art. This is why accusations of vulgarity levelled at Russell miss the point because the very act of the creative process IS vulgar in and of itself. Look at Tchaikovsky when he’s at his most content and creative — it’s when he has nothing to do besides swan about with zero responsibility, is adored from afar without having to risk any form of pain and gets paid to exist purely within his own head. What an asshole!
Yet this is because Russell has never been about uncritical hagiography and is always ready to pull his heroes back down to earth and expose the underlying existential gag at the heart of existence. It’s this “getting the gag” that makes his ‘Mahler’ (1974) work so beautifully and why the lack of it renders, say, Visconti’s ‘Death in Venice’ (1971) inadvertently hilarious. It’s the same with raw sensuality which is why, when it comes to examining sex, Russell’s ‘Crimes of Passion’ (1984) is vastly superior to Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999), something best demonstrated in ‘The Music Lovers’ when Madame von Meck enters Tchaikovsky’s quarters and lustfully licks the inside of his gaping peach.
Also, for all the lofty artistic ideals and rarefied subject matter Ken Russell was, deep down, an entertainer at heart and this is no better exemplified than in the staggering montage near the end when Tchaikovsky finally starts conducting, the impact of which trembles all of Russia to its very foundations as his 1812 overture literally blows everybody’s head off. This is the precise moment where the Russell loathers will tut, roll their eyes heave an exasperated sigh at it all whilst the Russell lovers will feel their hearts frolicking amidst the hilariously delightful mayhem. Personally it reduced me to such a state of blissful hysterics I was left crawling on my carpet unable to breathe.
‘The Music Lovers’ is absolutely glorious. Is it tasteless? Of course! But who said art had anything to do with taste? I mean Christ, have you ever heard Tchaikovsky’s music?
